A message had been sent by the wires to Trevelyan, to let him know that Mr Glascock was himself coming for the boy. Whether such message would or would not be sent out to Casalunga Mr Glascock had been quite ignorant, but it could, at any rate, do no harm. He did feel it hard as in this hot weather he made the journey, first to Florence, and then on to Siena. What was he to the Rowleys, or to Trevelyan himself, that such a job of work should fall to his lot at such a period of his life? He had been very much in love with Nora, no doubt; but, luckily for him, as he thought, Nora had refused him. As for Trevelyan, Trevelyan had never been his friend. As for Sir Marmaduke, Sir Marmaduke was nothing to him. He was almost angry even with Mrs Trevelyan as he arrived tired, heated, and very dusty, at Siena. It was his purpose to sleep at Siena that night, and to go out to Casalunga early the next morning. If the telegram had not been forwarded, he would send a message on that evening. On inquiry, however, he found that the message had been sent, and that the paper had been put into the Signore’s own hand by the Sienese messenger. Then he got into some discourse with the landlord about the strange gentleman at Casalunga. Trevelyan was beginning to become the subject of gossip in the town, and people were saying that the stranger was very strange indeed. The landlord thought that if the Signore had any friends at all, it would be well that such friends should come and look after him. Mr Glascock asked if Mr Trevelyan was ill. It was not only that the Signore was out of health, so the landlord heard, but that he was also somewhat — and then the landlord touched his head. He eat nothing, and went nowhere, and spoke to no one; and the people at the hospital to which Casalunga belonged were beginning to be uneasy about their tenant. Perhaps Mr Glascock had come to take him away. Mr Glascock explained that he had not come to take Mr Trevelyan away but only to take away a little boy that was with him. For this reason he was travelling with a maid-servant, a fact for which Mr Glascock clearly thought it necessary that he should give an intelligible and credible explanation. The landlord seemed to think that the people at the hospital would have been much rejoiced had Mr Glascock intended to take Mr Trevelyan away also.
He started after a very early breakfast, and found himself walking up over the stone ridges to the house between nine and ten in the morning. He himself had sat beside the driver and had put the maid inside the carriage. He had not deemed it wise to take an undivided charge of the boy even from Casalunga to Siena. At the door of the house, as though waiting for him, he found Trevelyan, not dirty as he had been before, but dressed with much appearance of smartness. He had a brocaded cap on his head, and a shirt with a laced front, and a worked waistcoat, and a frockcoat, and coloured bright trowsers. Mr Glascock knew at once that all the clothes which he saw before him had been made for Italian and not for English wear; and could almost have said that they had been bought in Siena and not in Florence. ‘I had not intended to impose this labour on you, Mr Glascock,’ Trevelyan said, raising his cap to salute his visitor.
‘For fear there might be mistakes, I thought it better to come myself,’ said Mr Glascock. ‘You did not wish to see Sir Marmaduke?’
‘Certainly not Sir Marmaduke,’ said Trevelyan, with a look of anger that was almost grotesque.
‘And you thought it better that Mrs Trevelyan should not come.’
‘Yes, I thought it better, but not from any feeling of anger towards her. If I could welcome my wife here, Mr Glascock, without a risk of wrath on her part, I should be very happy to receive her. I love my wife, Mr Glascock. I love her dearly. But there have been misfortunes. Never mind. There is no reason why I should trouble you with them. Let us go in to breakfast. After your drive you will have an appetite.’
Poor Mr Glascock was afraid to decline to sit down to the meal which was prepared for him. He did mutter something about having already eaten, but Trevelyan put this aside with a wave of his hand as he led the way into a spacious room, in which had been set out a table with almost a sumptuous banquet. The room was very bare and comfortless, having neither curtains nor matting, and containing not above half a dozen chairs. But an effort had been made to give it an air of Italian luxury. The windows were thrown open, down to the ground, and the table was decorated with fruits and three or four long-necked bottles. Trevelyan waved with his hand towards an arm-chair, and Mr Glascock had no alternative but to seat himself. He felt that he was sitting down to breakfast with a madman; but if he did not sit down, the madman might perhaps break out into madness. Then Trevelyan went to the door and called aloud for Catarina. ‘In these remote places,’ said he, ‘one has to do without the civilisation of a bell. Perhaps one gains as much in quiet as one loses in comfort.’ Then Catarina came with hot meats and fried potatoes, and Mr Glascock was compelled to help himself.
‘I am but a bad trencherman myself,’ said Trevelyan, ‘but I shall lament my misfortune doubly if that should interfere with your appetite.’ Then he got up and poured out wine into Mr Glascock’s glass. ‘They tell me that it comes from the Baron’s vineyard,’ said Trevelyan, alluding to the wine-farm of Ricasoli, ‘and that there is none better in Tuscany. I never was myself a judge of the grape, but this to me is as palatable as any of the costlier French wines. How grand a thing would wine really be, if it could make glad the heart of man. How truly would one worship Bacchus if he could make one’s heart to rejoice. But if a man have a real sorrow, wine will not wash it away, not though a man were drowned in it, as Clarence was.’
Mr Glascock hitherto had spoken hardly a word. There was an attempt at joviality about this breakfast or, at any rate, of the usual comfortable luxury of hospitable entertainment which, coming as it did from Trevelyan, almost locked his lips. He had not come there to be jovial or luxurious, but to perform a most melancholy mission; and he had brought with him his saddest looks, and was prepared for a few sad words. Trevelyan’s speech, indeed, was sad enough, but Mr Glascock could not take up questions of the worship of Bacchus at half a minute’s warning. He eat a morsel, and raised his glass to his lips, and felt himself to be very uncomfortable. It was necessary, however, that he should utter a word. ‘Do you not let your little boy come in to breakfast?’ he said.
‘He is better away,’ said Trevelyan gloomily.
‘But as we are to travel together,’ said Mr Glascock, ‘we might as well make acquaintance.’
‘You have been a little hurried with me on that score,’ said Trevelyan. ‘I wrote certainly with a determined mind, but things have changed somewhat since then.’
‘You do not mean that you will not send him?’
‘You have been somewhat hurried with me, I say. If I remember rightly, I named no time, but spoke of the future. Could I have answered the message which I received from you, I would have postponed your visit for a week or so.’
‘Postponed it! Why, I am to be married the day after tomorrow. It was just as much as I was able to do, to come here at all.’ Mr Glascock now pushed his chair back from the table, and prepared himself to speak up. ‘Your wife expects her child now, and you will ever break her heart by refusing to send him.’
‘Nobody thinks of my heart, Mr Glascock.’
‘But this is your own offer.’
‘Yes, it was my own offer, certainly. I am not going to deny my own words, which have no doubt been preserved in testimony against me.’
‘Mr Trevelyan, what do you mean?’ Then, when he was on the point of boiling over with passion, Mr Glascock remembered that his companion was not responsible for his expressions. ‘I do hope you will let the child go away with me,’ he said. ‘You cannot conceive the state of his mother’s anxiety, and she will send him back at once if you demand it.’
‘Is that to be in good faith?’
‘Certainly, in good faith. I would lend myself to nothing, Mr Trevelyan, that was not said and done in good faith.’
‘She will not break her word, excusing herself, because I am mad?’
‘I am sure that there is nothing of the kind in her mind.’
‘Perhaps not now; but such things grow. There is no iniquity, no breach of promise, no treason that a woman will not excuse to herself — or a man either — by the comfortable self-assurance that the person to be injured is mad. A hound without a friend is not so cruelly treated. The outlaw, the murderer, the perjurer has surer privileges than the man who is in the way, and to whom his friends can point as being mad!’ Mr Glascock knew or thought that he knew that his host in truth was mad, and he could not, therefore, answer this tirade by an assurance that no such idea was likely to prevail. ‘Have they told you, I wonder,’ continued Trevelyan, ‘how it was that, driven to force and an ambuscade for the recovery of my own child, I waylaid my wife and took him from her? I have done nothing to forfeit my right as a man to the control of my own family. I demanded that the boy should be sent to me, and she paid no attention to my words. I was compelled to vindicate my own authority; and then, because I claimed the right which belongs to a father, they said that I was mad! Ay, and they would have proved it, too, had I not fled from my country and hidden myself in this desert. Think of that, Mr Glascock! Now they have followed me here, not out of love for me; and that man whom they call a governor comes and insults me; and my wife promises to be good to me, and says that she will forgive and forget! Can she ever forgive herself her own folly, and the cruelty that has made shipwreck of my life? They can do nothing to me here; but they would entice me home because there they have friends, and can fee doctors with my own money and suborn lawyers, and put me away somewhere in the dark, where I shall be no more heard of among men! As you are a man of honour, Mr Glascock tell me; is it not so?’
‘I know nothing of their plans beyond this, that you wrote me word that you would send them the boy.’
‘But I know their plans. What you say is true. I did write you word, and I meant it. Mr Glascock, sitting here alone from morning to night, and lying down from night till morning, without companionship, without love, in utter misery, I taught myself to feel that I should think more of her than of myself.’
‘If you are so unhappy here, come back yourself with the child. Your wife would desire nothing better.’
‘Yes and submit to her, and her father, and her mother. No Mr Glascock; never, never. Let her come to me.’
‘But you will not receive her.’
‘Let her come in a proper spirit, and I will receive her. She is the wife of my bosom, and I will receive her with joy. But if she is to come to me and tell me that she forgives me — forgives me for the evil that she has done — then, sir, she had better stay away. Mr Glascock, you are going to be married. Believe me no man should submit to be forgiven by his wife. Everything must go astray if that be done. I would rather encounter their mad doctors, one of them after another till they had made me mad; I would encounter anything rather than that. But, sir, you neither eat nor drink, and I fear that my speech disturbs you.’
It was like enough that it may have done so. Trevelyan, as he had been speaking, had walked about the room, going from one extremity to the other with hurried steps, gesticulating with his arms, and every now and then pushing back with his hands the long hair from off his forehead. Mr Glascock was in truth very much disturbed. He had come there with an express object; but, whenever he mentioned the child, the father became almost rabid in his wrath. ‘I have done very well, thank you,’ said Mr Glascock. ‘I will not eat any more, and I believe I must be thinking of going back to Siena.’
‘I had hoped you would spend the day with me, Mr Glascock.’
‘I am to be married, you see, in two days; and I must be in Florence ............