"My Novel" — Complete

CHAPTER X

Randal rose at the sound of the first breakfast-bell, and on the staircase met Mrs. Haaeldean. He gave her back the book; and as he was about to speak, she beckoned to him to follow her into a little morning-room appropriated to herself,—no boudoir of white and gold, with pictures by Watteau, but lined with large walnut-tree presses, that held the old heirloom linen, strewed with lavender, stores for the housekeeper, and medicines for the poor.

Seating herself on a large chair in this sanctum, Mrs. Hazeldean looked formidably at home.

“Pray,” said the lady, coming at once to the point, with her usual straightforward candour, “what is all this you have been saying to my husband as to the possibility of Frank’s marrying a foreigner?”

RANDAL.—“Would you be as averse to such a notion as Mr. Hazeldean is?”

MRS. HAZELDEAN.—“You ask me a question, instead of answering mine.”

Randal was greatly put out in his fence by these rude thrusts. For indeed he had a double purpose to serve,—first, thoroughly to know if Frank’s marriage with a woman like Madame di Negra would irritate the squire sufficiently to endanger the son’s inheritance; and, secondly, to prevent Mr. and Mrs. Hazeldean believing seriously that such a marriage was to be apprehended, lest they should prematurely address Frank on the subject, and frustrate the marriage itself. Yet, withal, he must so express himself, that he could not be afterwards accused by the parents of disguising matters. In his talk to the squire the preceding day, he had gone a little too far,—further than he would have done but for his desire of escaping the cattle-shed and short-horns. While he mused, Mrs. Hazeldean observed him with her honest sensible eyes, and finally exclaimed,

“Out with it, Mr. Leslie!”

“Out with what, my dear madam? The squire has sadly exaggerated the importance of what was said mainly in jest. But I will own to you plainly, that Frank has appeared to me a little smitten with a certain fair Italian.”

“Italian!” cried Mrs. Hazeldean. “Well, I said so from the first. Italian!—that’s all, is it?” and she smiled. Randal was more and more perplexed. The pupil of his eye contracted, as it does when we retreat into ourselves, and think, watch, and keep guard.

“And perhaps,” resumed Mrs. Hazeldean, with a very sunny expression of countenance, “you have noticed this in Frank since he was here?”

“It is true,” murmured Randal; “but I think his heart or his fancy was touched even before.”

“Very natural,” said Mrs. Hazeldean; “how could he help it?—such a beautiful creature! Well, I must not ask you to tell Frank’s secrets; but I guess the object of attraction; and though she will have no fortune to speak of, and it is not such a match as he might form, still she is so amiable, and has been so well brought up, and is so little like one’s general notions of a Roman Catholic, that I think I could persuade Hazeldean into giving his consent.”

“Ah,” said Randal, drawing a long breath, and beginning, with his practised acuteness, to detect Mrs. Ilazeldean’s error, “I am very much relieved and rejoiced to hear this; and I may venture to give Frank some hope, if I find him disheartened and desponding, poor fellow?”

“I think you may,” replied Mrs. Hazeldean, laughing pleasantly. “But you should not have frightened poor William so, hinting that the lady knew very little English. She has an accent, to be sure; but she speaks our tongue very prettily. I always forget that she ‘s not English born! Ha, ha, poor William!”

RANDAL.—“Ha, ha!”

MRS. HAZELDEAN.—“We had once thought of another match for Frank,—a girl of good English family.”

RANDAL.—“Miss Sticktorights?”

MRS. HAZELDEAN.—“No; that’s an old whim of Hazeldean’s. But I doubt if the Sticktorights would ever merge their property in ours. Bless you! it would be all off the moment they came to settlements, and had to give up the right of way. We thought of a very different match; but there’s no dictating to young hearts, Mr. Leslie.”

RANDAL.—“Indeed no, Mrs. Hazeldean. But since we now understand each other so well, excuse me if I suggest that you had better leave things to themselves, and not write to Frank on the subject. Young hearts, you know, are often stimulated by apparent difficulties, and grow cool when the obstacle vanishes.”

MRS. HAZELDEAN.—“Very possibly; it was not so with Hazeldean and me. But I shall not write to Frank on the subject for a different reason—though I would consent to the match, and so would William; yet we both would rather, after all, that Frank married an Englishwoman, and a Protestant. We will not, therefore, do anything to encourage the idea. But if Frank’s happiness becomes really at stake, then we will step in. In short, we would neither encourage nor oppose. You understand?”

“Perfectly.”

“And in the mean while, it is quite right that Frank should see the world, and try to distract his mind, or at least to know it. And I dare say it has been some thought of that kind which has prevented his coming here.”

Randal, dreading a further and plainer eclaircissement, now rose, and saying, “Pardon me, but I must hurry over breakfast, and be back in time to catch the coach”—offered his arm to his hostess, and led her into the breakfast-parlour. Devouring his meal, as if in great haste, he then mounted his horse, and, taking cordial leave of his entertainers, trotted briskly away.

All things favoured his project,—even chance had befriended him in Mrs. Hazeldean’s mistake. She had, not unnaturally, supposed Violante to have captivated Frank on his last visit to the Hall. Thus, while Randal had certified his own mind that nothing could more exasperate the squire than an alliance with Madame di Negra, he could yet assure Frank that Mrs. Hazeldean was all on his side. And when the error was discovered, Mrs. Hazeldean would only have to blame herself for it. Still more successful had his diplomacy proved with the Riccaboccas: he had ascertained the secret he had come to discover; he should induce the Italian to remove to the neighbourhood of London; and if Violante were the great heiress he suspected her to prove, whom else of her own age would she see but him? And the old Leslie domains to be sold in two years—a portion of the dowry might purchase them! Flushed by the triumph of his craft, all former vacillations of conscience ceased. In high and fervent spirits he passed the Casino, the garden of which was solitary and deserted, reached his home, and, telling Oliver to be studious, and Juliet to be patient, walked thence to meet the coach and regain the capital.

CHAPTER XI

Violante was seated in her own little room, and looking from the window on the terrace that stretched below. The day was warm for the time of year. The orange-trees had been removed under shelter for the approach of winter; but where they had stood sat Mrs. Riccabocca at work. In the belvidere, Riccabocca himself was conversing with his favourite servant. But the casements and the door of the belvidere were open; and where they sat, both wife and daughter could see the padrone leaning against the wall, with his arms folded and his eyes fixed on the floor; while Jackeymo, with one finger on his master’s arm, was talking to him with visible earnestness. And the daughter from the window and the wife from her work directed tender, anxious eyes towards the still, thoughtful form so dear to both. For the last day or two, Riccabocca had been peculiarly abstracted, even to gloom. Each felt there was something stirring at his heart,—neither, as yet, knew what.

Violante’s room silently revealed the nature of the education by which her character had been formed. Save a sketchbook, which lay open on a desk at hand, and which showed talent exquisitely taught (for in this Riccabocca had been her teacher), there was nothing that spoke of the ordinary female accomplishments. No piano stood open, no harp occupied yon nook, which seemed made for one; no broidery-frame, nor implements of work, betrayed the usual and graceful resources of a girl; but ranged on shelves against the wall were the best writers in English, Italian, and French; and these betokened an extent of reading, that he who wishes for a companion to his mind in the sweet commune of woman, which softens and refines all it gives and takes in interchange, will never condemn as masculine. You had but to look into Violante’s face to see how noble was the intelligence that brought soul to those lovely features. Nothing hard, nothing dry and stern was there. Even as you detected knowledge, it was lost in the gentleness of grace. In fact, whatever she gained in the graver kinds of information became transmuted, through her heart and her fancy, into spiritual, golden stores. Give her some tedious and arid history, her imagination seized upon beauties other readers had passed by, and, like the eye of the artist, detected everywhere the Picturesque. Something in her mind seemed to reject all that was mean and commonplace, and to bring out all that was rare and elevated in whatever it received. Living so apart from all companions of her age, she scarcely belonged to the present time. She dwelt in the Past, as Sabrina in her crystal well. Images of chivalry, of the Beautiful and the Heroic,—such as, in reading the silvery line of Tasso, rise before us, softening force and valour into love and song,—haunted the reveries of the fair Italian maid.

Tell us not that the Past, examined by cold Philosophy, was no better and no loftier than the Present: it is not thus seen by pure and generous eyes. Let the Past perish, when it ceases to reflect on its magic mirror the beautiful Romance which is its noblest reality, though perchance but the shadow of Delusion.

Yet Violante was not merely the dreamer. In her, life was so puissant and rich, that action seemed necessary to its glorious development,—action, but still in the woman’s sphere,—action to bless and to refine and to exalt all around her, and to pour whatever else of ambition was left unsatisfied into sympathy with the aspirations of man. Despite her father’s fears of the bleak air of England, in that air she had strengthened the delicate health of her childhood. Her elastic step, her eyes full of sweetness and light, her bloom, at once soft and luxuriant,—all spoke of the vital powers fit to sustain a mind of such exquisite mould, and the emotions of a heart that, once aroused, could ennoble the passions of the South with the purity and devotion of the North. Solitude makes some natures more timid, some more bold. Violante was fearless. When she spoke, her eyes frankly met your own; and she was so ignorant of evil, that as yet she seemed nearly unacquainted with shame. From this courage, combined with affluence of idea, came a delightful flow of happy converse. Though possessing so imperfectly the accomplishments ordinarily taught to young women, and which may be cultured to the utmost, and yet leave the thoughts so barren, and the talk so vapid, she had that accomplishment which most pleases the taste, and commands the love, of the man of talent; especially if his talent be not so actively employed as to make him desire only relaxation where he seeks companionship,—the accomplishment of facility in intellectual interchange, the charm that clothes in musical words beautiful womanly ideas.

“I hear him sigh at this distance,” said Violante, softly, as she still watched her father; “and methinks this is a new grief, and not for his country. He spoke twice yesterday of that dear English friend, and wished that he were here.”

As she said this, unconsciously the virgin blushed, her hands drooped on her knee, and she fell herself into thought as profound as her father’s, but less gloomy. From her arrival in England, Violante had been taught a grateful interest in the name of Harley L’Estrange. Her father, preserving a silence that seemed disdain of all his old Italian intimates, had been pleased to converse with open heart of the Englishman who had saved where countrymen had betrayed. He spoke of the soldier, then in the full bloom of youth, who, unconsoled by fame, had nursed the memory of some hidden sorrow amidst the pine-trees that cast their shadow over the sunny Italian lake; how Riccabocca, then honoured and happy, had courted from his seclusion the English signore, then the mourner and the voluntary exile; how they had grown friends amidst the landscapes in which her eyes had opened to the day; how Harley had vainly warned him from the rash schemes in which he had sought to reconstruct in an hour the ruins of weary ages; how, when abandoned, deserted, proscribed, pursued, he had fled for life, the infant Violante clasped to his bosom, the English soldier had given him refuge, baffled the pursuers, armed his servants, accompanied the fugitive at night towards the defile in the Apennines, and, when the emissaries of a perfidious enemy, hot in the chase, came near, had said, “You have your child to save! Fly on! Another league, and you are beyond the borders. We will delay the foes with parley; they will not harm us.” And not till escape was gained did the father know that the English friend had delayed the foe, not by parley, but by the sword, holding the pass against numbers, with a breast as dauntless as Bayard’s on the glorious bridge.

And since then, the same Englishman had never ceased to vindicate his name, to urge his cause; and if hope yet remained of restoration to land and honours, it was in that untiring zeal.

Hence, naturally and insensibly, this secluded and musing girl had associated all that she read in tales of romance and chivalry with the image of the brave and loyal stranger. He it was who animated her drearhs of the Past, and seemed born to be, in the destined hour, the deliverer of the Future. Around this image grouped all the charms that the fancy of virgin woman can raise from the enchanted lore of old Heroic Fable. Once in her early girlhood, her father (to satisfy her curiosity, eager for general description) had drawn from memory a sketch of the features of the Englishman,—drawn Harley, as he was in that first youth, flattered and idealized, no doubt, by art, and by partial gratitude, but still resembling him as he was then, while the deep mournfulness of recent sorrow yet shadowed and concentrated all the varying expressions of his countenance; and to look on him was to say, “So sad, yet so young!” Never did Violante pause to remember that the same years which ripened herself from infancy into woman were passing less gently over that smooth cheek and dreamy brow,—that the world might be altering the nature as time the aspect. To her the hero of the Ideal remained immortal in bloom and youth. Bright illusion, common to us all, where Poetry once hallows the human form! Who ever thinks of Petrarch as the old, timeworn man? ‘Who does not see him as when he first gazed on Laura?—

CHAPTER XII

And Violante, thus absorbed in revery, forgot to keep watch on the belvidere. And the belvidere was now deserted. The wife, who had no other ideal to distract her thoughts, saw Riccabocca pass into the house.

The exile entered his daughter’s room, and she started to feel his hand upon her locks and his kiss upon her brow. “My child!” cried Riccabocca, seating himself, “I have resolved to leave for a time this retreat, and to seek the neighbourhood of London.”

“Ah, dear father, that, then, was your thought? But what can be your reason? Do not turn away; you know how care fully I have obeyed your command and kept your secret. Ah, you will confide in me.”

“I do, indeed,” returned Riccabocca, with emotion. “I leave this place in the fear lest my enemies discover me. I shall say to others that you are of an age to require teachers not to be obtained here, but I should like none to know where we go.”

The Italian said these last words through his teeth, and hanging his head. He said them in shame.

“My mother—[so Violante always called Jemima]—my mother—you have spoken to her?”

“Not yet. THERE is the difficulty.”

“No difficulty, for she loves you so well,” replied Violante, with soft reproach. “Ah, why not also confide in her? Who so true, so good?”

“Good—I grant it!” exclaimed Riccabocca. “What then? ‘Da cattiva Donna guardati, ed alla buona non fidar niente.‘—[From the bad woman, guard thyself; to the good woman trust nothing.]—And if you must trust,” added the abominable man, “trust her with anything but a secret!”

“Fie,” said Violante, with arch reproach, for she knew her father’s humours too well to interpret his horrible sentiments literally,—“fie on your consistency, Padre Carissimo. Do you not trust your secret to me?”

“You! A kitten is not a cat, and a girl is not a woman. Besides, the secret was already known to you, and I had no choice. Peace, Jemima will stay here for the present. See to what you wish to take with you; we shall leave to-night.” Not waiting for an answer, Riccabocca hurried away, and with a firm step strode the terrace, and approached his wife. “Anima mia,” said the pupil of Machiavelli, disguising in the tenderest words the cruellest intentions,—for one of his most cherished Italian proverbs was to the effect that there is no getting on with a mule or a woman unless you coax them,—“Anima mia, soul of my being, you have already seen that Violante mopes herself to death here.”

“She, poor child! Oh, no!”

“She does, core of my heart,—she does, and is as ignorant of music as I am of tent-stitch.”

“She sings beautifully.”

“Just as birds do, against all the rules, and in defiance of gamut. Therefore, to come to the point, O treasure of my soul! I am going to take her with me for a short time, perhaps to Cheltenham or Brighton. We shall see.”

“All places with you are the same to me, Alphonso. When shall we go?”

“We shall go to-night; but terrible as it is to part from you,—you—”

“Ah!” interrupted the wife, and covered her face with her hands.

Riccabocca, the wiliest and most relentless of men in his maxims, melted into absolute uxorial imbecility at the sight of that mute distress. He put his arm round his wife’s waist, with genuine affection, and without a single proverb at his heart. “Carissima, do not grieve so; we shall be back soon, and travelling is expensive; rolling stones gather no moss, and there is so much to see to at home.”

Mrs. Riccabocca gently escaped from her husband’s arm. She withdrew her hands from her face and brushed away the tears that stood in her eyes.

“Alphonso,” she said touchingly, “hear me! What you think good, that shall ever be good to me. But do not think that I grieve solely because of our parting. No; I grieve to think that, despite all these years in which I have been the partner of your hearth, and slept on your breast,—all these years in which I have had no thought but, however humbly, to do my duty to you and yours, and could have wished that you had read my heart, and seen there but yourself and your child,—I grieve to think that you still deem me as unworthy your trust as when you stood by my side at the altar.”

“Trust!” repeated Riccabocca, startled and conscience-stricken; “why do you say ‘trust’? In what have I distrusted you? I am sure,” he continued, with the artful volubility of guilt, “that I never doubted your fidelity, hook-nosed, long-visaged foreigner though I be; never pryed into your letters; never inquired into your solitary walks; never heeded your flirtations with that good-looking Parson Dale; never kept the money; and never looked into the account-books!” Mrs. Riccabocca refused even a smile of contempt at these revolting evasions; nay, she seemed scarcely to hear them.

“Can you think,” she resumed, pressing her hand on her heart to still its struggles for relief in sobs,—“can you think that I could have watched and thought and taxed my poor mind so constantly, to conjecture what might best soothe or please you, and not seen, long since, that you have secrets known to your daughter, your servant, not to me? Fear not,—the secrets cannot be evil, or you would not tell them to your innocent child. Besides, do I not know your nature; and do I not love you because I know it?—it is for something connected with those secrets that you leave your home. You think that I should be incautious, imprudent. You will not take me with you. Be it so. I go to prepare for your departure. Forgive me if I have displeased you, husband.” Mrs. Riccabocca turned away; but a soft hand touched the Italian’s arm. “O Father, can you resist this? Trust her! trust her!—I am a woman like her! I answer for her woman’s faith. Be yourself,—ever nobler than all others, my own father.”

“Diavolo! Never one door shuts but another opens,” groaned Riccabocca. “Are you a fool, child? Don’t you see that it was for your sake only I feared, and would be cautious?”

“For mine! Oh, then do not make me deem myself mean, and the cause of meanness. For mine! Am I not your daughter,—the descendant of men who never feared?” Violante looked sublime while she spoke; and as she ended she led her father gently on towards the door, which his wife had now gained.

“Jemima, wife mine! pardon, pardon,” cried the Italian, whose heart had been yearning to repay such tenderness and devotion,—“come back to my breast—it has been long closed,—it shall be open to you now and forever.”

In another moment the wife was in her right place,—on her husband’s bosom; and Violante, beautiful peacemaker, stood smiling awhile at both, and then lifted her eyes gratefully to heaven and stole away.

CHAPTER XIII

On Randal’s return to town, he heard mixed and contradictory rumours in the streets, and at the clubs, of the probable downfall of the Government at the approaching session of parliament. These rumours had sprung up suddenly, as if in an hour. True that, for some time, the sagacious had shaken their heads and said, “Ministers could not last.” True, that certain changes in policy, a year or two before, had divided the party on which the Government depended, and strengthened that which opposed it. But still the more important members of that Government had been so long identified with official station, and there seemed so little power in the Opposition to form a Cabinet of names familiar to official ears, that the general public had anticipated, at most, a few partial changes. Rumour now went far beyond this. Randal, whose whole prospects at present were but reflections from the greatness of his patron, was alarmed. He sought Egerton, but the minister was impenetrable, and seemed calm, confident, and imperturbed. Somewhat relieved, Randal then set himself to work to find a safe home for Riccabocca; for the greater need to succeed in obtaining fortune there, if he failed in getting it through Egerton. He found a quiet house, detached and secluded, in the neighbourhood of Norwood. No vicinity more secure from espionage and remark. He wrote to Riccabocca, and communicated the address, adding fresh assurances of his own power to be of use. The next morning he was seated in his office, thinking very little of the details, that he mastered, however, with mechanical precision, when the minister who presided over that department of the public service sent for him into his private room, and begged him to take a letter to Egerton, with whom he wished to consult relative to a very important point to be decided in the Cabinet that day. “I want you to take it,” said the minister, smiling (the minister was a frank homely man), “because you are in Mr. Egerton’s confidence, and he may give you some verbal message besides a written reply. Egerton is often over cautious and brief in the litera scripta.”