The Romance of Giovanni Calvotti | Page 8

then came music, and for an
hour we were happy.
CHAPTER III.
--AT POSILIPO.
Ay me, for one hour we were happy, and for many hours thereafter. But
when your heart is glad, when you drink the wine of joy, there is
Madame Circumstance keeping the score, and she brings in the bill at
the end of the banquet, and you pay it in coin of sorrow. She is my old
enemy, this Madame Circumstance, as I have told you. It is not always
that I can defy her. Who is it that is always brave? Not I. But I shall be
brave again in the morning, and the battle will begin again, and I shall
win. Pah! I have won already. I have smoked my pipe, and the incense
of victory curls about my head just now, at this moment. There is no
friend like your pipe. None.
Ten minutes ago I was despondent when; I sat down to write. I broke
off and smoked, and I am my own man again. (Regard once more the
beautiful English idiom, and the smiling soul which so soon after battle
can take delight in verbal felicities.)
Now I will go on with my story. It takes a long time to write. It will be
twelve months to-morrow since I last looked at the pages of this
narrative. I may not touch it again after to-day for a year. Who knows?
I went to Mr. Gregory's house in West-bourne Terrace on Friday, and I
continued to go there on Friday evenings until the close of the season.
Mr. Gregory is no more my patron, only: he is now my friend, and his
friendship is firm and true. I shall be honest in saying that to me those
Friday evenings were very beautiful. It was so great a change from the
hungry and lonely nights in my attic, to find myself back again with
ladies and gentlemen, myself well dressed and at home, and no longer
hungry. There I was admired and fêted, and all people made much of
me. I played and sang, and the people talked of my pictures, and

everywhere I was asked out, until I could have spent my every hour in
those calm social dissipations which make up so large a share of life in
all refined societies. For my friend Gregory is a man of
refinement--within himself--and his friends are all artistic and literary..
But why should I talk about him? Everybody knows him. Gregory the
millionaire; Gregory the connoisseur in wines, in pictures, in old
violins, in pottery; the Connoisseur in humanity at whose gatherings
the wisest and the most charming meet each other. Gregory the
ship-builder, iron-master, coal-owner; architect of himself--a splendid
edifice. That such a man should have bought my pictures was of itself a
fortune to me. I am on my way to get riches, and my balance at-the
bank is already respectable. Why, then, should I be at battle with
Madame Circumstance? You shall see.
One day at the beginning of this year he called to see me. I was hard at
work making the best of the few hours of light. He sat and watched for
a full hour, talking very little. At last he said--
'I can trust you, Calvotti. I want you to do me a service.'
'I am very heartily glad to hear it,' I answered.
'You won't understand what I want you to do unless I tell you the whole
story,' he said, after a pause. Then he remained silent for some time.
'Put down your brushes and listen,' he went on.
I obeyed him. He lit a cigar, poured out a glass of claret, crossed his
legs, and talked easily, though at times I could see that he felt strongly.
'I have had a good many friendly acquaintances in my life, and one
friend: he died five years ago. I was abroad at the time, in Russia,
laying down a railway. My friend, whom everybody supposed to be
fairly well-to-do, died poor. There was one lump sum of money in my
hands, placed there by him for investment, and that was almost all he
had. By some terrible mischance, the acknowledgment I had given for
this lump sum was lost, and his relatives were in ignorance of it. Six
months after his death I came home, and finding that nothing had been

said of the money he had entrusted to my care, I went to his lawyer and
spoke to him about it. My friend had been a widower for the last dozen
years. He had three children, and no other relatives in the world. After
the sale of his effects, poor fellow, the two girls disappeared utterly.
The son, who was a reckless, good-for-nothing scamp, was my