Lonely Carlotta: 'a crimson bud of a rose.' A novel

Part I

A deep blue sky o'erarching, not a cloud visible anywhere, the sun shining stilly, as if contented with its own warmth, sending bright rays, even through the foliage of a sturdy oak tree, on to the round brown cheeks of Carlotta Figueiras. Such is the scene with which Carlotta's story opens. Carlotta is the daughter of a Portuguese by an English wife, who had died some years ago, and the place, where we make her acquaintance, is in one of the wildest, prettiest gardens of Madeira, that lovely island that rises out of the great Atlantic b to be a joy to passing travellers, and recall wondrous tales of the great old Atlantic continent, of which some say it is but a remaining mountain top like Teneriffe, the Azores, and the other islands that stud the blue surface of the great Atlantic Ocean of these days.

Rather steeply does it rise out of the sea, and though Carlotta is standing upon a broad terrace walk, she has a some what bird's-eye view of Funchal Bay, blue like the sky overhead, the rich pur ple Cape Garajao, that bounds it to the East, and those strange rocky islands, the Desertas, lying upon the horizon beyond it, delicate blue now in the full noonday heat. Yet she has nothing to do but to turn her head, and she must look up at the hills steadily rising behind her, till their dark pine-clad summits rest confidingly against the sky. Carlotta, however, is not admiring the view, she is simply revelling in the delicious warmth and softness of the air, enhanced to her by the fragrance of that rich red rose, whose stalk she has most unromantically stuck in her mouth, something after the manner of a cigarette, while at the same time she is gazing through a long teles cope, which she supports against the oak tree, at a corvette slowly but gracefully tacking into the bay, with white sails dispread after the fashion of the olden days before steam spoilt sailing, as tele graphs have spoilt correspondence.

Carlotta takes no particular interest in that corvette, nor would she in the least know how to call it. It is a war-vessel of some kind she sees, but she is even unaware as yet that its flag is English ; she is only watching it because it is the one thing moving in all that wide land scape of many colours, and it is an un usual pleasure to the convent-bred girl to handle a telescope, and though she does not quite know how to manage it, yet it makes her feel grand only to attempt it. Carlotta is not at all accustomed to feeling grand. This little girl, with the well rounded figure, almost too full for her eighteen years — but then she was half Portuguese, and Portuguese girls ripen quicker than English — with large dark eyes, and a rather rough wealth of dark brown hair, apt to get loose and play about the prettily shaped cheeks, dyed almost as rich a red as the rose she is absently chewing; this little girl is apt to look upon herself as one of the worst of sinners, given up to the things of this world, of which she longs to know something, " if only to learn how wicked it is." says she sometimes to herself.

" Of course the world is very wicked, dreadfully wicked, but then when one does not know, it seems like sugar, so sweet — yet they say it is bad for the teeth. Of course I be lieve them," says Carlotta, " but if I had once just felt it for myself — " During the last ten years of her life Carlotta has only left the convent twice, and this is the second time. She wears a little dark dress without a single ornament, her hair is not particularly tidy, and I am sorry to say for Carlotta that she has made full use of her liberty this morning, and her brown hands are deeply dyed with crimson mulberry juice. She has a sort of guilty consciousness of this, and would be only too glad to find some unripe peaches, for, as every one knows, unripe peach skins are the only things to take out mulberry stains ; meanwhile she consoles herself with the idea " the cousin is so good, she will not mind what I do."

Indeed, Carlotta's cousin, to whom she owed it that she had twice escaped from the cloister walls that year, was so sorry for the poor girl who had grown up within them, that Carlotta would have had to do something very naughty indeed to obtain a scolding from her. The Senhora Figueiras was only a distant cousin of Carlotta's father, and when she had come to solace herself during the winter months with the balmy air of Madeira, she had not for a long time thought it necessary to call at the convent to inquire after " the little child," as Carlotta's father commonly called her, whenever he had occasion to mention her, while amusing himself among his friends in Lisbon. But when she had once done so, and found that the little child was eighteen years old, and partly from her convent confinement had as fine a colour as anyone could wish to see, and was something like a wild rosebud, or rather like a garden rose, that had strayed out into the mountains and grown wild, yet without losing any of its old beauty, and that she was altogether as unlike a little nun as possible ; then the good Senhora's heart began to melt over her distant cousin's child, and she was only sorry so little time yet remained to her in Madeira to make much of her, and bring her for ward a little.

She had had Carlotta already once to stay with her, and now this was the second time, and unfortu nately the last, for the good Senhora was about to leave for Lisbon, where, how ever, she intended to make very urgent representations to her cousin that his little child was grown up, and so to say marriageable. Meanwhile she meant to amuse Carlotta thoroughly this time, and to give a party for her benefit ; but of this Carlotta was not to know anything beforehand, only to find it out as a beautiful surprise in the evening, so she had been sent out of the way into the garden, while the preparations were making. Now Carlotta was all on a sudden tired of her solitude, she hung her head, and looked as sorrowful as a dog when no body pats his head. The rose dropped from her full red lips, while she pouted them to their full extent.

" There's nothing wicked here. In the town, I daresay," and she cast a longing glance on the red-roofed white houses and crooked streets of the little capital spread out before her. " But here the flowers aren't wicked, nor the birds. It is just as in the convent, I am the only wicked one. Ah, Deos ! I would not be wicked if I knew what it was, but you see I don't know," said she, looking up appealingly towards the blue sky, and at the same time crossing herself piously, as was her wont, whenever she had said anything which she feared was particu larly naughty. Then she thought she would go in to join her cousin, for she had not appreciated that she had been sent away for any particular reason ; so she walked along the broad terrace walk, and then turned off it up a long gravel path that led up to the house, situated in the midst of its garden, as is the case in most of the Quintas about Funchal.

But as she walked along this path be tween its two thick hedges of sweet scented wild geraniums, she paused under a corridor over which was trained a magnificent cloth-of-gold rose, and pressed one of the great golden flowers against her little finely shaped nose, that distended itself to suck up the sweet perfume, quite regardless of all laws of beauty. Then for a moment or two she stood quite still, smiling very sweetly and showing her pretty white teeth ; as she did so, anyone might have thought some pretty girlish vision of the future had come into her mind; but no, in a minute the little brown hand was stretched out shyly, and two large red strawberries were conveyed to the greedy little mouth. For Carlotta was decidedly greedy at this time of her life, fond of sugar and of sweets of all kinds, and quite capable of over-eating herself had she been allowed.

Besides these strawberries had the great additional charm that she was not quite sure if she was allowed to gather them. However it was not necessary to ask, and after eating them she went on very sedately towards the house, with the full intention of being particularly good after having committed so many doubtful ac tions that morning. But Carlotta had little idea to what temptations she was to be exposed, nor how she was at last going to be intro duced to that world of whose wickned ness she had such dim but large ideas, believing it to be something quite inex pressibly pleasant, and worth as many penances afterwards as even the most hard-hearted confessor could inflict. For the party that the Senhora Figueiras was arranging for that evening had been all on a sudden changed into something very brilliant on the sight of that corvette, that her little cousin had been so care lessly watching.

That would at least supply four dancing men, the Senhora reckoned, and so the party was to be no longer a conversazione, but a dance. How Carlotta felt, when she was first inducted into her first white muslin dress that evening, it would be hard to say. But she was very grave about it, and had a sense of something inexpressibly solemn. She had only violet ribbons after all, for it was not thought suitable for a girl out of a convent to be too gaily dressed. But then she had a white lily in her hair, that also being con sidered suitable for a girl brought up in a convent, and she was allowed to wear her mother's best pair of gold earrings, which she had never put on before ; and what with white gloves, and white shoes, and a fan, Carlotta thought she had never seen anything so lovely as when she looked upon her own reflection in the glass, and she gazed upon it with a kind of awe.

" The blessed angels are like that, I suppose," said she, naively. " Only they wear such beautiful things every day, of course." And Carlotta had never before so much wished to become an angel some day.

Part II

When young Lieutenant Calverley saw the invitation to the Senhora Figueiras' dance, he was half of the opinion that he would not go ; but when it fell to his lot to be able to do so if he liked, he supposed he was in for it, and while making his toilette, shut up in one of his drawers the recollection of a rather desperate flirtation he had carried on till the last moment of leaving England, and which he had tried to persuade himself was to be the grande passion of his life. For Phil Calverley was a fine young fellow with a warm open heart, which he had as yet found no convenient way of disposing of ; so being ordered to the East Indies, and having the probability of spending about five years in those sultry regions, he had been distressed by the vague idea that he should meet none but blackamoors during that time, and that a man at twenty-nine was almost middle-aged, so he had made one desperate attempt to lose his heart once for all before starting.

Indeed it seemed to him quite unsailorlike, and not at all the right thing to do, to sail away for five years without carrying with him at least one tender recollection of some girl he left behind him. So not being able to get leave to see if among all his numerous young lady cousins there were not one superlatively charming, he did the next best thing he could think of, and made love to the only girl he happened to know in the neighbourhood. She was a grave, quiet girl, staying with her mother for a few weeks at Southsea, and it was only thanks to the peculiar coldness of her disposition and precision of her manners, that there was no settled engagement between them, when young Lieutenant Calverley sailed away, trying, and for the moment almost successfully, to persuade himself that she was his womanly ideal.

Yet though the girl had been absolutely chilling in her undemonstrativeness, she cherished the tenderer memory of the two, and when at the last moment, carried away by his impulsiveness, or catching a spark from the glow of his ardour, she pressed into his hand her photograph, it was with the understanding that he would one day return to claim its original as his own. Phil Calverley fully meant to do so at that time, but after all like many other things in the young man's life, that atvol. I. c tempted love-making was only an episode. Yet for all its falsity and almost trans parent make-believe, he was as honest a young fellow in other ways as anyone could wish to see ; though in the matter of young ladies, he liked them all so much that he was rather apt to consider he liked each best at the moment he saw her.

He was generally considered a very steady young fellow, though not what either his best friends or worst enemies would have thought of calling a muff, or a religious young man. Yet though undistinguished by any abnormal love for church-going, or reading his Bible, indeed at this period of life dispensing with these outward helps perhaps rather more than was advisable, Phil Calverley had in him the kernel, that fostered by no hothouse atmosphere, nor blighted by adverse winds, might eventually develop into the sound, healthy religion of the full grown man. As yet he was young, and his religious faculties as his other faculties were still undeveloped, only in him there was the promise of what might come. All that, however, had not prevented his making very violent love to a girl for whom, had he not wished to fall in love with her, he would probably have felt rather an antipathy than otherwise.

Yet the recollection of her had still sufficient influence over him, even when he reached Madeira, to make him fancy that he did not particularly care about going to the Senhora Figueiras' dance. It had, however, quite passed away from him by the time that, in his best uniform, he had entered the brightly lighted, flower-decorated ball-room, and together with his companions made his bow to the lady of the house, and been by her selected to be led up first to the still very grave and toilette-conscious Carlotta. Any one else would have c thought the little girl very simply dressed, but first impressions are not easily effaced, and Carlotta still thought herself pecu liarly splendid. She had been from the first too much absorbed by the danger of tumbling her fresh muslin, or soiling her gloves, for it even to have occurred to her how pretty she herself looked with her rich crimson colour, and fine Southern eyes.

The young Lieutenant was, however, differently constituted, his first thought was. " Here is a little beauty indeed !" his next, of dismay, that Carlotta was a Portuguese, and would not be able to understand him. But Carlotta had not been allowed to forget the English she had known familiarly before her mother had died and the convent be come her home, and though she spoke with a slightly foreign accent, rather pretty than otherwise, and sometimes expressed herself strangely, she was quite intelligible, and evidently under stood what was said to her. It was rather a pity that she did not dance well, having had hardly any practice, but she had a good ear, and danced in perfect time; and the second time they started off together seemed to have recovered from her panic about her dress, etcetera, and as they paused again, said, with a tone of deep contentment : " I suppose dancing is the most delight ful pleasure that there is !"

" I am very fond of it, and so are you, I can see," said the young officer, politely ignoring her not having danced very well on first beginning. She was really improving now. " Oh, as for me," said Carlotta, with an intensely grave air, looking up impres sively into his face, as she spoke, " I have never properly danced before, not as we are doing now, for pleasure. Only I learnt a long, long time ago, and to-day with the cousin just for preparation, that I might not disgrace myself, she said. Otherwise dancing and all other sins are forbidden to me." " Do you call dancing a sin ?" said the young man, looking very admiringly at her pretty upturned face, but decidedly amused by her earnestness. "It is one of the pleasures of this world," said Carlotta solemnly. Then inquiringly, and rather low, lest anyone else should hear : "Is it the nicest, or is there yet another nicer ?"

" It is quite the nicest, when one dances with you," said the young man, half out of politeness, half joking. A bright smile broke over Carlotta's face, and she nodded comprehension, as she said quickly : " You like to dance with me ? So do I — I like to dance with you." After that, naturally they danced again, and Phil held her hand a little tighter than before, as he thought her the most simple little thing he had ever come across, and so pretty too, but he was half afraid she was stupid. However, he began to change his opinion, and almost doubted about her simplicity also, when Carlotta, on their pausing again before an open window, looked out longingly into the dark walks of the garden, and whis pered : " How cool it looks out there. It is hot here." Phil took the hint at once, and led her out; however, they were soon recalled by the Senhora, who was keeping a good look out over her little cousin, rather fear ful lest she should misbehave herself.

As to her appearance, the Senhora Figueiras was perfectly satisfied with that, and even her dancing was not so bad, considering she had never properly learned. The Senhora supposed she would learn in time not to hold herself quite so stiffly, her feet seemed to go rightly already. However, she was a good deal shocked by Carlotta's walking straight out into the garden with a strange young gentle man, and yet had not the heart to scold her at this party, which was given that the little girl might at least once in her life thoroughly enjoy herself; so she ex plained to Phil that her young cousin had never been at a party before, and had spent the last few years of her life in a convent. Honest Protestant Phil turned round to look at his pretty little partner, with a chest swelling with indignation.

" What a shame ! A little beauty like that ! And now, of course, they want to make a nun of her," and Carlotta became at once a heroine of romance in his eyes. " She is too pretty for a nun," said the Senhora, interpreting his glance of admiration and indignation mixed in about equal quantities, and taking some credit to herself for the beauty of her protegee. " A hundred thousand times too pretty," cried the young man, " but they can't force her, can they ? Not in these days ?" "Force her! N-o-o," said the Senhora, spinning out her No into the most doubt ful negative imaginable. " Only there is nothing else for her to do, unless she marries ; her father will never take her to live with him, I am afraid, he is too fond of his pleasures, and a daughter is a great expense. And then who is she to marry shut up between those high con vent walls ?"

With what horror Phil Calverley thought of those high convent walls. I believe his imagination actually went so far as to picture a damp little cell within them, and this lovely girl with only a horse-hair bed to rest upon, and not even a bird for a play-fellow. Anyhow, he seized the first possible opportunity to ask the little victim for another dance. Then they talked for a long time, and began to grow quite confidential together. " Is it really true that you have spent ten years in a miserable convent ?" asked he, at last, very tenderly, adding almost paternally : " You must have been very miserable there." Carlotta shrugged her shoulders. " That is all the life I know," said she simply. " They say the world outside is a terrible place, and that I ought to be glad to find such a quiet refuge.

But I do not wish for a refuge," she added, pouting the ripest red lips in the world. Phil Calverley thought her absolutely bewitch ing, when she pouted. " When the hopes are fallen away like the leaves in Autumn, and the heart is broken, then perhaps — " " God forbid !" said the young Lieutenant devoutly. "What should break your heart, you little darling ?" They were not dancing now, but had wandered to a window, not that from which they had before passed out into the garden, but another, beneath which the garden sloped rapidly away, and they were standing in the little balcony, leaning against the railing, but of course there was no impropriety in that, for they were in full view of the dancers. However they were so much alone, and had grown so friendly together by this time, that the word darling slipped out quite unawares.

Philip, however, grew rather frightened, when he heard it, but Carlotta did not by any means withdraw her hand from his arm. She only turned round, and looked full at him, with her dark eyes opened to their widest extent ; yet hardly with an expression of surprise, rather with a deep gravity borrowed from the night into which she had been gazing. The young Lieu tenant had never premeditated anything, nor was he given to thinking much of con sequences. He was certainly not particu larly likely to think of consequences now, as purely from impulse he pressed the little hand resting upon his arm, and en couraged by the absence of rebuke, con tinued in much the same tone, " Who could help loving you ? And how could your heart be broken then ?" " It always happens," said Carlotta, emphatically. " You little goose !" said Phil, speaking even more affectionately than before, quite caressingly indeed.

" Who can have told you such dreadful nonsense ?" " You are a man," said Carlotta calmly, " and possibly it may not happen to men. But I know all about it, though I have not felt it myself. The nuns are good," said she, spreading out her hands, and assuming a half condescending tone, as she admitted thus much. " They warn me often, and I know how dreadfully wicked the world is. Men too !" said she, looking up with grave observant eyes. " They are monsters ! It is a pity, for I like you better than the nuns. But that is because I only see the outside ; of course your heart is desperately wicked." Phil hardly knew whether to laugh or to be offended, between the two he grew very red, as he said, " That is very unkind of you to think so badly of me. I think much better of you, though I cannot see your heart either, but I take for granted you are a little angel."

" That is because I am dressed like one, all white and beautiful," said Carlotta, now taking away her hand from his arm, that she might spread out her dress with both hands, and exhibit it to him. " Only not the wings ! I am glad I have not the wings, I might have to fly about, and do one of the good God's messages then, and it is nicer to stay with you. You must not be angry that I think you wicked, for — you won't tell, will you? — not the others," said she, glancing back, appre hensively to the ball-room, " but I don't mind your knowing, because you're — you're like St. Stanislaus, so young and beautiful, that I am sure you won't be angry. But you know I am very wicked, altogether very wicked," whispered she quite ear nestly, speaking as near as she could reach to his ear now. " There is no good in me, none : I do not find my chief pleasure in saying prayers, and I like the Festas much more because there is always some thing good to eat, than for the sake of the Saints ; and sometimes I — I cry when they tell me I am to be a nun."

She looked as if she thought he must be dreadfully shocked by this last confession, then added meditatively : " It is only because I am so wicked, that I like you so much. The blessed St. Agnes with her lamb would never have danced. How could she ? the poor lamb would have fallen from her arms. And St. Cecilia, even when she was married, and St. Catharine, all the Saints, indeed, I believe have shunned men. Now I should like to have you with me in the convent to amuse me. It would be quite different then. I should not mind the high walls, if you could not pass beyond them either. Only now it is so dull. I do not read that the greatest Saints lived in convents," said Carlotta, shaking her head. The young Lieutenant was a little em barrassed among so many Saints, so thought it safest to reply to the easiest part of her speech.

" Should you really like the convent if I were there too? Should you want no one else ?" " Who should I want more ?" said Carlotta innocently. " The cousin is very good. I should like to see her sometimes too, if the good God permitted it to me, and I should always pray to the Virgin for her, always every day. But she is going away, and you would be quite enough." At that moment the music struck up a fresh dance, and a figure in uniform could be discerned evidently coming in search of Carlotta. Phil had not yet seen who it was, but he exclaimed indignantly, " The villain ! he is coming to take you away from me." " You do not like him ! He is a bad man !" exclaimed Carlotta, suddenly as suming an air of righteous indignation. " I will not dance with him then. I will not "do anything you do not like."

" Hush ! hush ! It is the skipper him self. You must dance with him. No, he is not a bad man, only don't — don't talk to him in the way you have to me, you know. There's no necessity for being particularly civil." " Like snow," said Carlotta solemnly, and at that very moment advanced naively to take the Commander's arm, before he had even got near enough to her to offer it, looking so very unlike snow, as she did so, that Phil Calverley almost ground his teeth, as he called her the most thorough going little coquette he had ever come across ; while Carlotta went round and round the room so gravely without once smiling, and answered with such a very proper air, that the Senhora Figueiras, who was watching her, and had been rather apprehensive again about the long pause in the balcony with the young Lieutenant, began to be quite easy about her, and thought she had now learnt company manners sufficiently to be able to get on without any very special sur- VOL. I. d veillance.

Meanwhile Phil Calverley was looking positively sulky, whilst he was thinking to himself that a girl like that, a pretty little girl like that, who looked up into your face and told you quite frankly that she liked you, ought not to be allowed to dance round the room with just any man who liked to ask her. It was a thing which shouldn't be. Now if it had been any other man but his own Commander, he would have forbidden her himself. " And the little darling, I believe she would have obeyed me, if I had," said he, melting again, and then growing ten times sulkier than before, as he recollected how very unlike snow Carlotta had looked, when she had positively walked forward to receive the Commander in what seemed to him the most unnecessarily cordial manner. He did not recover his good humour till he had secured her for his own partner again, and then instead of looking for a place in the quadrille, he walked away with her at once, determined to scold her ; but Carlotta forestalled him by looking up at him with tearful eyes, as she said, " The day after to-morrow I go back to the convent again.