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Page 69
"And please," said Miss Abbott, "would you order a
carriage for me too?"
"You going?" he exclaimed.
"Of course," she replied, suddenly flushing. "Why not?"
"Why, of course you would be going. Two carriages,
then. Two carriages for the evening train." He looked at
his sister hopelessly. "Harriet, whatever are you up to?
We shall never be ready."
"Order my carriage for the evening train," said Harriet,
and departed.
"Well, I suppose I shall. And I shall also have my
interview with Signor Carella."
Miss Abbott gave a little sigh.
"But why should you mind? Do you suppose that I shall
have the slightest influence over him?"
"No. But--I can't repeat all that I said in the church.
You ought never to see him again. You ought to bundle
Harriet into a carriage, not this evening, but now, and
drive her straight away."
"Perhaps I ought. But it isn't a very big 'ought.'
Whatever Harriet and I do the issue is the same. Why, I can
see the splendour of it--even the humour. Gino sitting up
here on the mountain-top with his cub. We come and ask for
it. He welcomes us. We ask for it again. He is equally
pleasant. I'm agreeable to spend the whole week bargaining
with him. But I know that at the end of it I shall descend
empty-handed to the plains. It might be finer of me to make
up my mind. But I'm not a fine character. And nothing
hangs on it."
"Perhaps I am extreme," she said humbly. "I've been
trying to run you, just like your mother. I feel you ought
to fight it out with Harriet. Every little trifle, for some
reason, does seem incalculably important today, and when you
say of a thing that 'nothing hangs on it,' it sounds like
blasphemy. There's never any knowing--(how am I to put
it?)--which of our actions, which of our idlenesses won't
have things hanging on it for ever."
He assented, but her remark had only an aesthetic value.
He was not prepared to take it to his heart. All the
afternoon he rested--worried, but not exactly despondent.
The thing would jog out somehow. Probably Miss Abbott was
right. The baby had better stop where it was loved. And
that, probably, was what the fates had decreed. He felt
little interest in the matter, and he was sure that he had
no influence.
It was not surprising, therefore, that the interview at
the Caffe Garibaldi came to nothing. Neither of them took
it very seriously. And before long Gino had discovered how
things lay, and was ragging his companion hopelessly.
Philip tried to look offended, but in the end he had to
laugh. "Well, you are right," he said. "This affair is
being managed by the ladies."
"Ah, the ladies--the ladies!" cried the other, and then
he roared like a millionaire for two cups of black coffee,
and insisted on treating his friend, as a sign that their
strife was over.
"Well, I have done my best," said Philip, dipping a long
slice of sugar into his cup, and watching the brown liquid
ascend into it. "I shall face my mother with a good
conscience. Will you bear me witness that I've done my best?"
"My poor fellow, I will!" He laid a sympathetic hand on
Philip's knee.
"And that I have--" The sugar was now impregnated with
coffee, and he bent forward to swallow it. As he did so his
eyes swept the opposite of the Piazza, and he saw there,
watching them, Harriet. "Mia sorella!" he exclaimed. Gino,
much amused, laid his hand upon the little table, and beat
the marble humorously with his fists. Harriet turned away
and began gloomily to inspect the Palazzo Pubblico.
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