On my return from Upperstone House this morning I found Dando at the Rectory door with the two horses. He told me that his master had something of great importance and urgency to communicate to me.
John Hollyshoes was in his library as before, reading a book. Upon a dirty little table at his side there was wine in a dirty glass. “Ah! Mr. Simonelli!” he cried, jumping up. “I am very glad to see you! It seems, sir, that you have the family failing as well as the family face!”
“And what would that be?” said I.
“Why! Lying, of course! Oh, come, Mr. Simonelli! Do not look so shocked. You are found out, sir. Your father’s name was not Simonelli — and, to my certain knowledge, he was never at Genoa!”
A silence of some moments’ duration.
“Did you know my father, sir?” said I, in some confusion.
“Oh, yes! He was my cousin.”
“That is entirely impossible,” said I.
“Upon the contrary,” said he. “If you will take a moment to peruse this letter you will see that it is exactly as I say.” And he handed me some yellowing sheets of paper.
“What your aim may be in insulting me,” I cried, “I cannot pretend to guess, but I hope, sir, that you will take back those words or we shall be obliged to settle the matter some other way.” With the utmost impatience I thrust his letter back at him, when my eye was caught by the words “the third daughter of a York linen-draper.” “Wait!” I cried and snatched it back again. “My mother was the third daughter of a York linen-draper!”
“Indeed, Mr. Simonelli,” said John Hollyshoes, with his long sideways smile.
The letter was addressed to John Hollyshoes and had been written at the Old Starre Inn in Stonegate, York. The writer of the letter mentioned that he was in the middle of a hasty breakfast and there were some stains as of preserves and butter. It seemed that the writer had been on his way to Allhope House to pay John Hollyshoes a visit when he had been delayed in York by a sudden passion for the third daughter of a York linen-draper. His charmer was most minutely described. I read of “a slight plumpness,” “light silvery-gold curls,” “eyes of a forget-me-not blue.”
By all that I have ever been told by my friends, by all that I have ever seen in sketches and watercolour portraits, this was my mother! But if nothing else proved the truth of John Hollyshoes’s assertion, there was the date — January 19th, 1778—nine months to the day before my own birth. The writer signed himself, “Your loving cousin, Thomas Fairwood.”
“So much love,” I said, reading the letter, “and yet he deserted her the very next day!”
“Oh! You must not blame him,” said John Hollyshoes. “A person cannot help his disposition, you know.”
“And yet,” said I, “one thing puzzles me still. My mother was extremely vague upon all points concerning her seducer — she did not even know his name — yet one thing she was quite clear about. He was a foreign gentleman.”
“Oh! That is easily explained,” he said. “For though we have lived in this island a very long time — many thousands of years longer than its other inhabitants — yet still we hold ourselves apart and pride ourselves on being of quite other blood.”
“You are Jews perhaps, sir?” said I.
“Jews?” said he. “No, indeed!”
I thought a moment. “You say my father is dead?”
“Alas, yes. After he parted from your mother, he did not in fact come to Allhope House, but was drawn away by horse races at this place and cock-fighting at that place. But some years later he wrote to me again telling me to expect him at midsummer and promising to stay with me for a good long while. This time he got no further than a village near Carlisle where he fell in love with two young women. …”
“Two young women!” I cried in astonishment.
“Well,” said John Hollyshoes. “Each was as beautiful as the other. He did not know how to choose between them. One was the daughter of a miller and the other was the daughter of a baker. He hoped to persuade them to go with him to his house in the Eildon Hills where he intended that both should live forever and have all their hearts’ desire. But, alas, it did not suit these ungrateful young women to go, and the next news I had of him was that he was dead. I discovered later that the miller’s daughter had sent him a message which led him to believe that she at least was on the point of relenting, and so he went to her father’s mill, where the fast-running water was shaded by a rowan tree — and I pause here merely to observe that of all the trees in the greenwood the rowan is the most detestable. Both young women were waiting for him. The miller’s daughter jangled a bunch of horrid rowan-berries in his face. The baker’s daughter was then able to rumble him into the stream, whereupon both women rolled the millstone on top of him, pinning him to the floor of the stream. He was exceedingly strong. All my family—our family I should say — are exceedingly strong, exceedingly hard to kill, but the millstone lay on his chest. He was unable to rise and so, in time, he drowned.”
“Good God!” I cried. “But this is dreadful! As a clergyman I cannot approve his habit of seducing young women, but as a son I must observe that in this particular instance the revenge extracted by the young women seems out of all proportion to his offense. And were these bloodthirsty young women never brought to justice?”
“Alas, no,” said John Hollyshoes. “And now I must beg that we cease to speak of a subject so very unpleasant to my family feelings. Tell me instead why you fixed upon this odd notion of being Italian.”
I told him how it had been my grandfather’s idea. From my own dark looks and what his daughter had told him, he thought I might be Italian or Spanish. A fondness for Italian music caused him to prefer that country. Then he had taken his own name, George Alexander Simon, and fashioned out of it a name for me, Giorgio Alessandro Simonelli. I told how that excellent old gentleman had not cast off his daughter when she fell but had taken good care of her, provided money for attendants and a place for her to live, and how, when she died of sorrow and shame shortly after my birth, he had brought me up and had me educated.
“But what is most remarkable,” said John Hollyshoes, “is that you fixed upon that city which — had Thomas Fairwood ever gone to Italy — was precisely the place to have pleased him most. Not gaudy Venice, not trumpeting Rome, not haughty Florence, but Genoa, all dark shadows and sinister echoes tumbling down to the shining sea!”
“Oh! But I chose it quite at random, I assure you.”
“That,” said John Hollyshoes, “has nothing to do with it. In choosing Genoa you exhibited the extraordinary penetration which has always distinguished our family. But it was your eyesight that betrayed you. Really, I was never so astonished in my life as I was when you remarked upon the one or two specks of dust which clung to the baby’s wrapper.”
I asked after the health of his son.
“Oh! He is well. Thank you. We have got an excellent wet-nurse — from your own parish — whose milk agrees wonderfully well with the child.”
In the stable-yard at Upperstone House this morning the Miss Gathercoles were preparing for their ride. Naturally I was invited to accompany them.