"My Novel" — Complete
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“Does it exist still? Into whose hands would it have fallen?
“Try to summon up all your recollections. The servant could not remember the name of the person to whom it was addressed; she only insisted that the name began with a B, that it was directed to England, and that to England she accordingly paid the postage. Whom then, with a name that begins with B, or (in case the servant’s memory here mislead her) whom did you or your wife know, during your visit to England, with sufficient intimacy to make it probable that she would select such a person for her confidant?”
“I cannot conceive,” said Riccabocca, shaking his head. “We came to England shortly after our marriage. Paulina was affected by the climate. She spoke not a word of English, and indeed not even French, as might have been expected from her birth, for her father was poor, and thoroughly Italian. She refused all society. I went, it is true, somewhat into the London world,—enough to induce me to shrink from the contrast that my second visit as a beggared refugee would have made to the reception I met with on my first; but I formed no intimate friendships. I recall no one whom she could have written to as intimate with me.”
“But,” persisted Harley, “think again. Was there no lady well acquainted with Italian, and with whom, perhaps, for that very reason, your wife became familiar?”
“Ah, it is true. There was one old lady of retired habits, but who had been much in Italy. Lady—Lady—I remember—Lady Jane Horton.”
“Horton—Lady Jane!” exclaimed Harley; “again; thrice in one day!—is this wound never to scar over?” Then, noting Riccabocca’s look of surprise, he said, “Excuse me, my friend; I listen to you with renewed interest. Lady Jane was a distant relation of my own; she judged me, perhaps, harshly—and I have some painful associations with her name; but she was a woman of many virtues. Your wife knew her?”
“Not, however, intimately; still, better than any one else in London. But Paulina would not have written to her; she knew that Lady Jane had died shortly after her own departure from England. I myself was summoned back to Italy on pressing business; she was too unwell to journey with me as rapidly as I was obliged to travel; indeed, illness detained her several weeks in England. In this interval she might have made acquaintances. Ah, now I see; I guess. You say the name began with B. Paulina, in my absence, engaged a companion,—a Mrs. Bertram. This lady accompanied her abroad. Paulina became excessively attached to her, she knew Italian so well. Mrs. Bertram left her on the road, and returned to England, for some private affairs of her own. I forget why or wherefore; if, indeed, I ever asked or learned. Paulina missed her sadly, often talked of her, wondered why she never heard from her. No doubt it was to this Mrs. Bertram that she wrote!”
“And you don’t know the lady’s friends, or address?”
“No.”
“Nor who recommended her to your wife?”
“No.”
“Probably Lady Jane Horton?”
“It may be so.
“Very likely.”
“I will follow up this track, slight as it is.”
“But if Mrs. Bertram received the communication, how comes it that it never reached myself—Oh, fool that I am, how should it! I, who guarded so carefully my incognito!”
“True. This your wife could not foresee; she would naturally imagine that your residence in England would be easily discovered. But many years must have passed since your wife lost sight of this Mrs. Bertram, if their acquaintance was made so soon after your marriage; and now it is a long time to retrace,—before even your Violante was born.”
“Alas! yes. I lost two fair sons in the interval. Violante was born to me as the child of sorrow.”
“And to make sorrow lovely! how beautiful she is!” The father smiled proudly.
“Where, in the loftiest houses of Europe, find a husband worthy of such a prize?”
“You forget that I am still an exile, she still dowerless. You forget that I am pursued by Peschiera; that I would rather see her a beggar’s wife—than—Pah, the very thought maddens me, it is so foul. Corpo di Bacco! I have been glad to find her a husband already.”
“Already! Then that young man spoke truly?”
“What young man?”
“Randal Leslie. How! You know him?” Here a brief explanation followed. Harley heard with attentive ear, and marked vexation, the particulars of Riccabocca’s connection and implied engagement with Leslie.
“There is something very suspicious to me in all this,” said he.
“Why should this young man have so sounded me as to Violante’s chance of losing fortune if she married, an Englishman?”
“Did he? Oh, pooh! Excuse him. It was but his natural wish to seem ignorant of all about me. He did not know enough of my intimacy with you to betray my secret.”
“But he knew enough of it—must have known enough—to have made it right that he should tell you I was in England. He does not seem to have done so.”
“No; that is strange—yet scarcely strange; for, when we last met, his head was full of other things,—love and marriage. Basta! youth will be youth.”
“He has no youth left in him!” exclaimed Harley, passionately. “I doubt if he ever had any. He is one of those men who come into the world with the pulse of a centenarian. You and I never shall be as old as he was in long clothes. Ah, you may laugh; but I am never wrong in my instincts. I disliked him at the first,—his eye, his smile, his voice, his very footstep. It is madness in you to countenance such a marriage; it may destroy all chance of your restoration.”
“Better that than infringe my word once passed.”
“No, no,” exclaimed Harley; “your word is not passed, it shall not be passed. Nay, never look so piteously at me. At all events, pause till we know more of this young man. If he be worthy of her without a dower, why, then, let him lose you your heritage. I should have no more to say.”
“But why lose me my heritage? There is no law in Austria which can dictate to a father what husband to choose for his daughter.”
“Certainly not. But you are out of the pale of law itself just at present; and it would surely be a reason for State policy to withhold your pardon, and it would be to the loss of that favour with your own countrymen, which would now make that pardon so popular, if it were known that the representative of your name were debased by your daughter’s alliance with an English adventurer,—a clerk in a public office. Oh, sage in theory, why are you such a simpleton in action?”
Nothing moved by this taunt, Riceabocca rubbed his hands, and then stretched them comfortably over the fire.
“My friend,” said he, “the representation of my name would pass to my son.”
“But you have no son.”
“Hush! I am going to have one; my Jemima informed me of it yesterday morning; and it was upon that information that I resolved to speak to Leslie. Am I a simpleton now?”
“Going to have a son,” repeated Harley, looking very bewildered; “how do you know it is to be a son?”
“Physiologists are agreed,” said the sage, positively, “that where the husband is much older than the wife, and there has been a long interval without children before she condescends to increase the population of the world, she (that is, it is at least as nine to four)—she brings into the world a male. I consider that point therefore as settled, according to the calculations of statisticians and the researches of naturalists.”
Harley could not help laughing, though he was still angry and disturbed.
“The same man as ever; always the fool of philosophy.”
“Cospetto!” said Riccabocca. “I am rather the philosopher of fools. And talking of that, shall I present you to my Jemima?”
“Yes; but in turn I must present you to one who remembers with gratitude your kindness, and whom your philosophy, for a wonder, has not ruined. Some time or other you must explain that to me. Excuse me for a moment; I will go for him.
“For him,—for whom? In my position I must be cautious; and—”
“I will answer for his faith and discretion. Meanwhile order dinner, and let me and my friend stay to share it.”
“Dinner? Corpo di Bacco!—not that Bacchus can help us here. What will Jemima say?”
“Henpecked man, settle that with your connubial tyrant. But dinner it must be.”
I leave the reader to imagine the delight of Leonard at seeing once more Riccabocca unchanged and Violante so improved, and the kind Jemima too; and their wonder at him and his history, his books and his fame. He narrated his struggles and adventures with a simplicity that removed from a story so personal the character of egotism. But when he came to speak of Helen he was brief and reserved.
Violante would have questioned more closely; but, to Leonard’s relief, Harley interposed.
“You shall see her whom he speaks of before long, and question her yourself.”
With these words, Harley turned the young man’s narrative into new directions; and Leonard’s words again flowed freely. Thus the evening passed away happily to all save Riccabocca. For the thought of his dead wife rose ever and anon before the exile; but when it did, and became too painful, he crept nearer to Jemima, and looked in her simple face, and pressed her cordial hand. And yet the monster had implied to Harley that his comforter was a fool,—so she was, to love so contemptible a slanderer of herself and her sex.
Violante was in a state of blissful excitement; she could not analyze her own joy. But her conversation was chiefly with Leonard; and the most silent of all was Harley. He sat listening to Leonard’s warm yet unpretending eloquence,—that eloquence which flows so naturally from genius, when thoroughly at its ease, and not chilled back on itself by hard, unsympathizing hearers; listened, yet more charmed, to the sentiments less profound, yet no less earnest,—sentiments so feminine, yet so noble, with which Violante’s fresh virgin heart responded to the poet’s kindling soul. Those sentiments of hers were so unlike all he heard in the common world, so akin to himself in his gone youth! Occasionally—at some high thought of her own, or some lofty line from Italian song, that she cited with lighted eyes, and in melodious accents—occasionally he reared his knightly head, and his lip quivered, as if he had heard the sound of a trumpet. The inertness of long years was shaken. The Heroic, that lay deep beneath all the humours of his temperament, was reached, appealed to; and stirred within him, rousing up all the bright associations connected with it, and long dormant. When he arose to take leave, surprised at the lateness of the hour, Harley said, in a tone that bespoke the sincerity of the compliment, “I thank you for the happiest hours I have known for years.” His eye dwelt on Violante as he spoke.
But timidity returned to her with his words, at his look; and it was no longer the inspired muse, but the bashful girl that stood before him.
“And when shall I see you again?” asked Riccabocca, disconsolately, following his guest to the door.
“When? Why, of course, to-morrow. Adieu! my friend. No wonder you have borne your exile so patiently,—with such a child!”
He took Leonard’s arm, and walked with him to the inn where he had left his horse. Leonard spoke of Violante with enthusiasm. Harley was silent.
CHAPTER III
The next day a somewhat old-fashioned, but exceedingly patrician, equipage stopped at Riccabocca’s garden-gate. Giacomo, who, from a bedroom window, had caught sight of its winding towards the house, was seized with undefinable terror when he beheld it pause before their walls, and heard the shrill summons at the portal. He rushed into his master’s presence, and implored him not to stir,—not to allow any one to give ingress to the enemies the machine might disgorge. “I have heard,” said he, “how a town in Italy—I think it was Bologna—was once taken and given to the sword, by incautiously admitting a wooden horse full of the troops of Barbarossa and all manner of bombs and Congreve rockets.”
“The story is differently told in Virgil,” quoth Riccabocca, peeping out of the window. “Nevertheless, the machine looks very large and suspicious; unloose Pompey.”
“Father,” said Violante, colouring, “it is your friend, Lord L’Estrange; I hear his voice.”
“Are you sure?”
“Quite. How can I be mistaken?”
“Go, then, Giacomo; but take Pompey with thee,—and give the alarm if we are deceived.”
But Violante was right; and in a few moments Lord L’Estrange was seen walking up the garden, and giving the arm to two ladies.
“Ah,” said Riccabocca, composing his dressing-robe round him, “go, my child, and summon Jemima. Man to man; but, for Heaven’s sake, woman to woman.”
Harley had brought his mother and Helen, in compliment to the ladies of his friend’s household.
The proud countess knew that she was in the presence of Adversity, and her salute to Riccabocca was only less respectful than that with which she would have rendered homage to her sovereign. But Riccabocca, always gallant to the sex that he pretended to despise, was not to be outdone in ceremony; and the bow which replied to the courtesy would have edified the rising generation, and delighted such surviving relics of the old Court breeding as may linger yet amidst the gloomy pomp of the Faubourg St. Germain. These dues paid to etiquette, the countess briefly introduced Helen as Miss Digby, and seated herself near the exile. In a few moments the two elder personages became quite at home with each other; and, really, perhaps Riccabocca had never, since we have known him, showed to such advantage as by the side of his polished, but somewhat formal visitor. Both had lived so little with our modern, ill-bred age! They took out their manners of a former race, with a sort of pride in airing once more such fine lace and superb brocade. Riccabocca gave truce to the shrewd but homely wisdom of his proverbs, perhaps he remembered that Lord Chesterfield denounces proverbs as vulgar; and gaunt though his figure, and far from elegant though his dressing-robe, there was that about him which spoke undeniably of the grand seigneur,—of one to whom a Marquis de Dangeau would have offered a fauteuil by the side of the Rohans and Montmorencies.
Meanwhile Helen and Harley seated themselves a little apart, and were both silent,—the first, from timidity; the second, from abstraction. At length the door opened, and Harley suddenly sprang to his feet,—Violante and Jemima entered. Lady Lansinere’s eyes first rested on the daughter, and she could scarcely refrain from an exclamation of admiring surprise; but then, when she caught sight of Mrs. Riccabocca’s somewhat humble, yet not obsequious mien,—looking a little shy, a little homely, yet still thoroughly a gentlewoman (though of your plain, rural kind of that genus), she turned from the daughter, and with the savoir vivre of the fine old school, paid her first respects to the wife; respects literally, for her manner implied respect,—but it was more kind, simple, and cordial than the respect she had shown to Riccabocca; as the sage himself had said, here “it was Woman to Woman.” And then she took Violante’s hand in both hers, and gazed on her as if she could not resist the pleasure of contemplating so much beauty. “My son,” she said softly, and with a half sigh,—“my son in vain told me not to be surprised. This is the first time I have ever known reality exceed description!”
Violante’s blush here made her still more beautiful; and as the countess returned to Riccabocca, she stole gently to Helen’s side.
“Miss Digby, my ward,” said Harley, pointedly, observing that his mother had neglected her duty of presenting Helen to the ladies. He then reseated himself, and conversed with Mrs. Riccabocca; but his bright, quick eye glanced over at the two girls. They were about the same age—and youth was all that, to the superficial eye, they seemed to have in common. A greater contrast could not well be conceived; and, what is strange, both gained by it. Violante’s brilliant loveliness seemed yet more dazzling, and Helen’s fair, gentle face yet more winning. Neither had mixed much with girls of her own age; each took to the other at first sight. Violante, as the less shy, began the conversation.
“You are his ward,—Lord L’Estrange’s?”
“Yes.”
“Perhaps you came with him from Italy?”
“No, not exactly; but I have been in Italy for some years.”
“Ah! you regret—nay, I am foolish—you return to your native land. But the skies in Italy are so blue,—here it seems as if Nature wanted colours.”
“Lord L’Estrange says that you were very young when you left Italy; you remember it well. He, too, prefers Italy to England.”
“He! Impossible!”
“Why impossible, fair sceptic?” cried Harley, interrupting himself in the midst of a speech to Jemima.
Violante had not dreamed that she could be overheard—she was speaking low; but, though visibly embarrassed, she answered distinctly,
“Because in England there is the noblest career for noble minds.”
Harley was startled, and replied, with a slight sigh, “At your age I should have said as you do. But this England of ours is so crowded with noble minds that they only jostle each other, and the career is one cloud of dust.”
“So, I have read, seems a battle to a common soldier, but not to the chief.”
“You have read good descriptions of battles, I see.”
Mrs. Riccabocca, who thought this remark a taunt upon her step-daughter’s studies, hastened to Violante’s relief.
“Her papa made her read the history of Italy, and I believe that is full of battles.”
HARLEY.—“All history is, and all women are fond of war and of warriors. I wonder why?”
VIOLANTE (turning to Helen, and in a very low voice, resolved that Harley should not hear this time).—“We can guess why,—can we not?”
HARLEY (hearing every word, as if it had been spoken in St. Paul’s Whispering Gallery).—“If you can guess, Helen, pray tell me.”
HELEN (shaking her pretty head, and answering with a livelier smile than usual).—“But I am not fond of war and warriors.”
HARLEY (to Violante).—“Then I must appeal at once to you, self-convicted Bellona that you are. Is it from the cruelty natural to the female disposition?”
VIOLANTE (with a sweet musical laugh). “From two propensities still more natural to it.”
HARLEY.—“YOU puzzle me: what can they be?”
VIOLANTE.—“Pity and admiration; we pity the weak and admire the brave.”
Harley inclined his head, and was silent.
Lady Lansmere had suspended her conversation with Riccabocca to listen to this dialogue. “Charming!” she cried.
“You have explained what has often perplexed me. Ah, Harley, I am glad to see that your satire is foiled: you have no reply to that.”
“No; I willingly own myself defeated, too glad to claim the signorina’s pity, since my cavalry sword hangs on the wall, and I can have no longer a professional pretence to her admiration.”
He then rose, and glanced towards the window. “But I see a more formidable disputant for my conqueror to encounter is coming into the field,—one whose profession it is to substitute some other romance for that of camp and siege.”
“Our friend Leonard,” said Riccabocca, turning his eye also towards the window. “True; as Quevedo says, wittily, ‘Ever since there has been so great a demand for type, there has been much less lead to spare for cannon-balls.’”
Here Leonard entered. Harley had sent Lady Lansmere’s footman to him with a note, that prepared him to meet Helen. As he came into the room, Harley took him by the hand and led him to Lady Lansmere.
“The friend of whom I spoke. Welcome him now for my sake, ever after for his own;” and then, scarcely allowing time for the countess’s elegant and gracious response, he drew Leonard towards Helen. “Children,” said he, with a touching voice, that thrilled through the hearts of both, “go and seat yourselves yonder, and talk together of the past. Signorina, I invite you to renewed discussion upon the abstruse metaphysical subject you have started; let us see if we cannot find gentler sources for pity and admiration than war and warriors.” He took Violante aside to the window. “You remember that Leonard, in telling you his history last night, spoke, you thought, rather too briefly of the little girl who had been his companion in the rudest time of his trials. When you would have questioned more, I interrupted you, and said, ‘You should see her shortly, and question her yourself.’ And now what think you of Helen Digby? Hush, speak low. But her ears are not so sharp as mine.”
VIOLANTE.—“Ah! that is the fair creature whom Leonard called his child-angel? What a lovely innocent face!—the angel is there still.”
HARLEY (pleased both at the praise and with her who gave it).—“You think so; and you are right. Helen is not communicative. But fine natures are like fine poems,—a glance at the first two lines suffices for a guess into the beauty that waits you if you read on.”
Violante gazed on Leonard and Helen as they sat apart. Leonard was the speaker, Helen the listener; and though the former had, in his narrative the night before, been indeed brief as to the episode in his life connected with the orphan, enough had been said to interest Violante in the pathos of their former position towards each other, and in the happiness they must feel in their meeting again,—separated for years on the wide sea of life, now both saved from the storm and shipwreck. The tears came into her eyes. “True,” she said, very softly, “there is more here to move pity and admiration than in—” She paused.
HARLEY.—“Complete the sentence. Are you ashamed to retract? Fie on your pride and obstinacy!”
VIOLANTE.—“No; but even here there have been war and heroism,—the war of genius with adversity, and heroism in the comforter who shared it and consoled. Ah, wherever pity and admiration are both felt, something nobler than mere sorrow must have gone before: the heroic must exist.”
“Helen does not know what the word ‘heroic’ means,” said Harley, rather sadly; “you must teach her.”
“Is it possible,” thought he as he spoke, “that a Randal Leslie could have charmed this grand creature? No ‘Heroic’ surely, in that sleek young placeman.—Your father,” he said aloud, and fixing his eyes on her face, “sees much, he tells me, of a young man about Leonard’s age, as to date; but I never estimate the age of men by the parish register, and I should speak of that so-called young man as a contemporary of my great-grandfather,—I mean Mr. Randal Leslie. Do you like him?”
“Like him,” said Violante, slowly, and as if sounding her own mind,—“like him—yes.”
“Why?” asked Harley, with dry and curt indignation. “His visits seem to please my dear father. Certainly I like him.”
“Hum. He professes to like you, I suppose?”
Violante laughed unsuspiciously. She had half a mind to reply, “Is that so strange?” But her respect for Harley stopped her. The words would have seemed to her pert. “I am told he is clever,” resumed Harley.
“Oh, certainly.”
“And he is rather handsome. But I like Leonard’s face better.”
“Better—that is not the word. Leonard’s face is as that of one who has gazed so often upon Heaven; and Mr. Leslie’s—there is neither sunlight nor starlight reflected there.”
“My dear Violante?” exclaimed Harley, overjoyed; and he pressed her hand.
The blood rushed over the girl’s cheek and brow; her hand trembled in his. But Harley’s familiar exclamation might have come from a father’s lips.
At this moment Helen softly approached them, and looking timidly into her guardian’s face, said, “Leonard’s mother is with him: he asks me to call and see her. May I?”