Vittoria. Complete
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“Hush! you may hear good news from Carlo Alberto in a few hours,” said Merthyr.
“Ask Laura; she has witnessed how he can be shattered,” Vittoria replied bitterly.
Merthyr pressed her fingers. He was met by Carlo on the stairs.
“Quick!” Carlo said; “I have scarce a minute to spare. I have my adieux to make, and the tears have set in already. First, a request: you will promise to remain beside my wife; she will want more than her own strength.”
Such a request, coming from an Italian husband, was so great a proof of the noble character of his love and his knowledge of the woman he loved, that Merthyr took him in his arms and kissed him.
“Get it over quickly, dear good fellow,” Carlo murmured; “you have something to tell me. Whatever it is, it’s air; but I’ll listen.”
They passed into a vacant room. “You know you are betrayed,” Merthyr began.
“Not exactly that,” said Carlo, humming carelessly.
“Positively and absolutely. The Countess d’Isorella has sold your secrets.”
“I commend her to the profit she has made by it.”
“Do you play with your life?”
Carlo was about to answer in the tone he had assumed for the interview. He checked the laugh on his lips.
“She must have some regard for my life, such as it’s worth, since, to tell you the truth, she is in the house now, and came here to give me fair warning.”
“Then, you trust her.”
“I? Not a single woman in the world!—that is, for a conspiracy.”
It was an utterly fatuous piece of speech. Merthyr allowed it to slip, and studied him to see where he was vulnerable.
“She is in the house, you say. Will you cause her to come before me?”
“Curiously,” said Carlo, “I kept her for some purpose of the sort. Will I? and have a scandal now? Oh! no. Let her sleep.”
Whether he spoke from noble-mindedness or indifference, Merthyr could not guess.
“I have a message from your friend Luciano. He sends you his love, in case he should be shot the first, and says that when Lombardy is free he hopes you will not forget old comrades who are in Rome.”
“Forget him! I would to God I could sit and talk of him for hours. Luciano! Luciano! He has no wife.”
Carlo spoke on hoarsely. “Tell me what authority you have for charging Countess d’Isorella with… with whatever it may be.”
“A conversation between Countess Anna of Lenkenstein and a Major Nagen, in the Duchess of Graatli’s house, was overheard by our Beppo. They spoke German. The rascal had a German sweetheart with him. She imprisoned him for some trespass, and had come stealing in to rescue him, when those two entered the room. Countess Anna detailed to Nagen the course of your recent plotting. She named the hour this morning when you are to start for Brescia. She stated what force you have, what arms you expect; she named you all.”
“Nagen—Nagen,” Carlo repeated; “the man’s unknown to me.”
“It’s sufficient that he is an Austrian officer.”
“Quite. She hates me, and she has reason, for she’s aware that I mean to fight her lover, and choose my time. The blood of my friends is on that man’s head.”
“I will finish what I have to say,” pursued Merthyr. “When Beppo had related as much as he could make out from his sweetheart’s translation, I went straight to the duchess. She is an Austrian, and a good and reasonable woman. She informed me that a letter addressed by Countess Anna to Countess d’Isorella fell into her hands this night. She burnt it unopened. I leave it to you to consider whether you have been betrayed and who has betrayed you. The secret was bought. Beppo himself caught the words, ‘from a mercenary Italian.’ The duchess tells me that Countess Anna is in the habit of alluding to Countess d’Isorella in those terms.”
Carlo stretched his arms like a man who cannot hide the yawning fit.
“I promised my wife five minutes, though we have had the worst of the parting over. Perhaps you will wait for me; I may have a word to say.”
He was absent for little more than the space named. When he returned, he was careful to hide his face. He locked the door, and leading Merthyr to an inner room, laid his watch on the table, and said: “Now, friend, you will see that I have nothing to shrink from, for I am going to do execution upon myself, and before him whom I would, above all other men, have think well of me. My wife supposes that I am pledged to this Brescian business because I am insanely patriotic. If I might join Luciano tomorrow I would shout like a boy. I would be content to serve as the lowest in the ranks, if I might be with you all under the Chief. Rome crowns him, and Brescia is my bloody ditch, and it is deserved! When I was a little younger—I am a boy still, no doubt—I had the honour to be distinguished by a handsome woman; and when I grew a little older, I discovered by chance that she had wit. The lady is the Countess Violetta d’Isorella. It is a grief to me to know that she is sordid: it hurts my vanity the more. Perhaps: you begin to perceive that vanity governs me. The signora Laura has not expressed her opinion on this subject with any reserve, but to Violetta belongs the merit of having seen it without waiting for the signs. First—it is a small matter, but you are English—let me assure you that my wife has had no rival. I have taunted her with jealousy when I knew that it was neither in her nature to feel it, nor in mine to give reason for it. No man who has a spark of his Maker in him could be unfaithful to such a woman. When Lombardy was crushed, we were in the dust. I fancy we none of us knew how miserably we had fallen—we, as men. The purest—I dare say, the bravest—marched to Rome. God bless my Luciano there! But I, sir, I, my friend, I, Merthyr, I said proudly that I would not abandon a beaten country: and I was admired for my devotion. The dear old poet, Agostino, praised me. It stopped his epigrams—during a certain time, at least. Colonel Corte admired me. Marco Sana, Giulio Bandinelli admired me. Vast numbers admired me. I need not add that I admired myself. I plunged into intrigues with princes, and priests, and republicans. A clever woman was at my elbow. In the midst of all this, my marriage: I had seven weeks of peace; and then I saw what I was. You feel that you are tired, when you want to go another way and you feel that you have been mad when you want to undo your work. But I could not break the chains I had wrought, for I was a chief of followers. The men had come from exile, or they had refused to join the Roman enterprise:—they, in fact, had bound themselves to me; and that means, I was irrevocably bound to them. I had an insult to wipe out: I refrained from doing it, sincerely, I may tell you, on the ground that this admired life of mine was precious. I will heap no more clumsy irony on it: I can pity it. Do you see now how I stand? I know that I cannot rely on the king’s luck or on the skill of his generals, or on the power of his army, or on the spirit in Lombardy: neither on men nor on angels. But I cannot draw back. I have set going a machine that’s merciless. From the day it began working, every moment has added to its force. Do not judge me by your English eyes: other lands, other habits; other habits, other thoughts. And besides, if honour said nothing, simple humanity would preserve me from leaving my band to perish like a flock of sheep.”
He uttered this with a profound conviction of his quality as leader, that escaped the lurid play of self-inspection which characterized what he had previously spoken, and served singularly in bearing witness to the truth of his charge against himself.
“Useless!” he said, waving his hand at anticipated remonstrances. “Look with the eyes of my country; not with your own, my friend. I am disgraced if I do not go out. My friends are disgraced if I do not head them in. Brescia—sacrificed!—murdered!—how can I say what? Can I live under disgrace or remorse? The king stakes on his army; I on the king. Whether he fights and wins, or fights and loses, I go out. I have promised my men—promised them success, I believe!—God forgive me! Did you ever see a fated man before? None had plotted against me. I have woven my own web, and that’s the fatal thing. I have a wife, the sweetest woman of her time. Goodnight to her! our parting is over.”
He glanced at his watch. “Perhaps she will be at the door below. Her heart beats like mine just now. You wish to say that you think me betrayed, and therefore I may draw back? Did you not hear that Bergamo has risen? The Brescians are up too by this time. Gallant Brescians! they never belie the proverb in their honour; and to die among them would be sweet if I had all my manhood about me. You would have me making a scene with Violetta.”
“Set the woman face to face with me!” cried Merthyr, sighting a gleam of hope.
Carlo smiled. “Can she bear my burden though she be ten times guilty? Let her sleep. I have her here harmless for the night. The Brescians are up:—that’s an hour that has struck, and there’s no calling it to move a step in the rear. Brescia under the big Eastern hill which throws a cloak on it at sunrise! Brescia is always the eagle that looks over Lombardy! And Bergamo! you know the terraces of Bergamo. Aren’t they like a morning sky? Dying there is not death; it’s flying into the dawn. You Romans envy us. Come, confess it; you envy us. You have no Alps, no crimson hills, nothing but old walls to look on while you fight. Farewell, Merthyr Powys. I hear my servant’s foot outside. My horse is awaiting me saddled, a mile from the city. Perhaps I shall see my wife again at the door below, or in heaven. Addio! Kiss Luciano for me. Tell him that I knew myself as well as he did, before the end came. Enrico, Emilio, and the others—tell them I love them. I doubt if there will ever be but a ghost of me to fight beside them in Rome. And there’s no honour, Merthyr, in a ghost’s fighting, because he’s shotproof; so I won’t say what the valiant disembodied ‘I’ may do by-and-by.”
He held his hands out, with the light soft smile of one who asks forgiveness for flippant speech, and concluded firmly: “I have talked enough, and you are the man of sense I thought you; for to give me advice is childish when no power on earth could make me follow it. Addio! Kiss me.”
They embraced. Merthyr said no more than that he would place messengers on the road to Brescia to carry news of the king’s army. His voice was thick, and when Carlo laughed at him, his sensations strangely reversed their situations.
There were two cloaked figures at different points in the descent of the stairs. These rose severally at Carlo’s approach, took him to their bosoms, and kissed him in silence. They were his mother and Laura. A third crouched by the door of the courtyard, which was his wife.
Merthyr kept aloof until the heavy door rolled a long dull sound. Vittoria’s head was shawled over. She stood where her husband had left her, groping for him with one hand, that closed tremblingly hard on Merthyr when he touched it. Not a word was uttered in the house.
CHAPTER XLV
SHOWS MANY PATHS CONVERGING TO THE END
Until daylight Merthyr sat by himself, trying to realize the progressive steps of the destiny which seemed like a visible hand upon Count Ammiani, that he might know it to be nothing else than Carlo’s work. He sat in darkness in the room where Carlo had spoken, thinking of him as living and dead. The brilliant life in Carlo protested against a possible fatal tendency in his acts so irrevocable as to plunge him to destruction when his head was clear, his blood cool, and a choice lay open to him. That brilliant young life, that fine face, the tones of Carlo’s voice, swept about Merthyr, accusing him of stupid fatalism. Grief stopped his answer to the charge; but in his wise mind he knew Carlo to have surveyed things justly; and that the Fates are within us. Those which are the forces of the outer world are as shadows to the power we have created within us. He felt this because it was his gathered wisdom. Human compassion, and love for the unhappy youth, crushed it in his heart, and he marvelled how he could have been paralyzed when he had a chance of interceding. Can a man stay a torrent? But a noble and fair young life in peril will not allow our philosophy to liken it to things of nature. The downward course of a fall that takes many waters till it rushes irresistibly is not the course of any life. Yet it is true that our destiny is of our own weaving. Carlo’s involvements cast him into extreme peril, almost certain death, unless he abjured his honour, dearer than a life made precious by love. Merthyr saw that it was not vanity, but honour; for Carlo stood pledged to lead a forlorn enterprise, the ripeness of his own scheming. In the imminent hour Carlo had recognized his position as Merthyr with the wisdom of years looked on it. That was what had paralyzed the older man, though he could not subsequently trace the cause. Thinking of the beauty of the youth, husband of the woman who was to his soul utterly an angel, Merthyr sat in the anguish of self-accusation, believing that some remonstrance, some inspired word, might have turned him, and half dreading to sound his own heart, as if an evil knowledge of his nature haunted it.
He rose up at last with a cry. The door opened, and Giacinta, Vittoria’s maid, appeared, bearing a lamp. She had been sitting outside, waiting to hear him stir before she intruded. He touched her cheek kindly, and thought that one could do little better than die, if need were, in the service of such a people. She said that her mistress was kneeling. She wished to make coffee for him, and Merthyr let her do it, knowing the comfort there is to a woman in the ministering occupation of her hands. It was soon daylight. Beppo had not come back to the house.
“No one has left the house?” Merthyr asked.
“Not since—” she answered convulsively.
“The Countess d’Isorella is here?”
“Yes, signore.”
“Asleep?” he put the question mournfully, in remembrance of Carlo’s “Let her sleep!”
“Yes, signore; like the first night after confession.”
“She resides, I think, in the Corso Venezia. When she awakens, let her know that I request to have the honour of conducting her.”
“Yes, signore. Her carriage is still at the gates. The countess’s horses are accustomed to stand.”
Merthyr knew this for a hint against his leaving, as well as against the lady’s character.
“Let your mistress be assured that I shall on no account be long absent at any time.”
“Signore, I shall do so,” said Giacinta.
She brought him word soon after, that Countess d’Isorella was stirring. Merthyr met Violetta on the stairs.
“Can it be true?” she accosted him first.
“Count Ammiani has left for Brescia,” he replied.
“In spite of my warning?”
Merthyr gave space for her to pass into the room. She appeared undecided, saying that she had a dismal apprehension of her not having dismissed her coachman overnight.
“In spite of my warning,” she murmured again, “he has really gone? Surely I cannot have slept more than three hours.”
“It was Count Ammiani’s wish that you should enjoy your full sleep undisturbed in his house,” said Merthyr, “As regards your warning to him, he has left Milan perfectly convinced of the gravity of a warning that comes from you.”
Violetta shrugged lightly. “Then all we have to do is to pray for the success of Carlo Alberto.”
“Oh! pardon me, countess,” Merthyr rejoined, “prayers may be useful, but you at least have something to do besides.”
His eyes caught hers firmly as they were letting a wild look of interrogation fall on him, and he continued with perfect courtesy, “You will accompany me to see Countess Anna of Lenkenstein. You have great influence, madame. It is not Count Ammiani’s request; for, as I informed you, it was his wish that you should enjoy your repose. The request is mine, because his life is dear to me. Nagen, I think, is the name of the Austrian officer who has started for Brescia.”
She had in self-defence to express surprise while he spoke, which compelled her to meet his mastering sight and submit to a struggle of vision sufficient to show him that he had hit a sort of guilty consciousness. Otherwise she was not discomposed, and with marvellous sagacity she accepted the forbearance he assumed, not affecting innocence to challenge it, as silly criminals always do when they are exposed, but answering quite in the tone of innocence, and so throwing the burden by an appearance of mutual consent on some unnamed third person.
“Certainly; let us go to Countess Anna of Lenkenstein, if you think fit. I have to rely on your judgement. I quite abjure my own. If I have to plead for anything, I am going before a woman, remember.”
“I do not forget it,” said Merthyr.
“The expedition to Brescia may be unfortunate,” she resumed hurriedly; “I wish it had not been undertaken. At any rate, it rescues Count Ammiani from an expedition to Rome, and his slavish devotion to that priest-hating man whom he calls, or called, his Chief. At Brescia he is not outraging the head of our religion. That is a gain.”
“A gain for him in the next world?” said Merthyr. “I believe that Countess Anna of Lenkenstein is also a fervent Catholic; is she not?”
“I trust so.”
“On behalf of her peace of mind, I trust so, too. In that case, she also must be a sound sleeper.”
“We shall have to awaken her. What excuse—what am I to say to her?”
“I beg you to wait for the occasion, Countess d’Isorella. The words will come.”
Violetta bit her lip. She had consented to this extraordinary step in an amazement. As she contemplated it now, it seemed worse than a partial confession and an appeal to his generosity. She broke out in pity for her horses, in dread of her coachman, declaring that it was impossible for her to give him the order to drive her anywhere but home.
“With your permission, countess, I will undertake to give him the order,” said Merthyr.
“But have you no compassion, signor Powys? and you are an Englishman! I thought that Englishmen were excessively compassionate with horses.”
“They have been known to kill them in the service of their friends, nevertheless.”
“Well!”—Violetta had recourse to the expression of her shoulders—“and I am really to see Countess Anna?”
“In my presence.”
“Oh! that cannot be. Pardon me; it is impossible. She will decline the scene. I say it with the utmost sincerity: I know that she will refuse.”
“Then, countess,” Merthyr’s face grew hard, “if I am not to be in your company to prompt you, allow me to instruct you beforehand.”
Violetta looked at him eagerly, as one looks for tidings, with an involuntary beseeching quiver of the strained eyelids.
“No irony!” she said, fearing horribly that he was about to throw off the mask of irony.
This desperate effort of her wits at the crisis succeeded.
Merthyr, not knowing what design he had, hopeless of any definite end in tormenting the woman, and never having it in his mind merely to punish, was diverted by the exclamation to speak ironically. “You can tell Countess Anna that it is only her temporal sovereign who is attacked, and that therefore—” he could not continue.
“Some affection?” he murmured, in intense grief.
His manly forbearance touched her whose moral wit was too blunt to apprehend the contempt in it.
“Much affection—much!” Violetta exclaimed. “I have a deep affection for Count Ammiani; an old friendship. Believe me! believe me! I came here last night to save him. Anything on earth that I can do, I will do—on my honour; and do not smile at that—I have never pledged it without fulfilling the oath. I will not sleep while I can aid in preserving him. He shall know that I am not the base person he has conceived me to be. You, signor Powys, are not a man to paint all women black that are a little less than celestial—are you? I am told it is a trick with your countrymen; and they have a poet who knew us! I entreat you to confide in me. I am at present quite unaware that Count Ammiani runs particular—I mean personal danger. He is in danger, of course; everyone can see it. But, on my honour—and never in my life have I spoken so earnestly, my friends would hardly recognize me—I declare to you on my faith as a Christian lady, I am ignorant of any plot against him. I can take a Cross and kiss it, like a peasant, and swear to you by the Madonna that I know nothing of it.”
She corrected her ardour, half-exulting in finding herself carried so far and so swimmingly on a tide of truth, half wondering whether the flowering beauty of her face in excitement had struck his sensibility. He was cold and speculative.
“Ah!” she said, “if I were to ask my compatriots to put faith in a woman’s pure friendship for a man, I should know the answer; but you, signor Powys, who have shown us that a man is capable of the purest friendship for a woman, should believe me.”
He led her down to the gates, where her coachman sat muffled in a three-quarter sleep. The word was given to drive to her own house; rejoiced by which she called his attention deploringly to the condition of her horses, requesting him to say whether he could imagine them the best English, and confessing with regret, that she killed three sets a year—loved them well, notwithstanding. Merthyr saw enough of her to feel that she was one of the weak creatures who are strong through our greater weakness; and, either by intuition or quick wit, too lively and too subtle to be caught by simple suspicion. She even divined that reflection might tell him she had evaded him by an artifice—a piece of gross cajolery; and said, laughing: “Concerning friendship, I could offer it to a boy, like Carlo Ammiani; not to you, signor Powys. I know that I must check a youth, and I am on my guard. I should be eternally tormented to discover whether your armour was proof.”
“I dare say that a lady who had those torments would soon be able to make them mine,” said Merthyr.
“You could not pay a fairer compliment to some one else,” she remarked. In truth, the candid personal avowal seemed to her to hold up Vittoria’s sacred honour in a crystal, and the more she thought of it, the more she respected him, for his shrewd intelligence, if not for his sincerity; but on the whole she fancied him a loyal friend, not solely a clever maker of phrases; and she was pleased with herself for thinking such a matter possible, in spite of her education.
“I do most solemnly hope that you may not have to sustain Countess Alessandra under any affliction whatsoever,” she said at parting.
Violetta had escaped an exposure—a rank and naked accusation of her character and deeds. She feared nothing but that, being quite indifferent to opinion; a woman who would not have thought it preternaturally sad to have to walk as a penitent in the streets, with the provision of a very thick veil to cover her. She had escaped, but the moment she felt herself free, she was surprised by a sharp twinge of remorse. She summoned her maid to undress her, and smelt her favourite perfume, and lay in her bed, to complete her period of rest, closing her eyes there with a child’s faith in pillows. Flying lights and blood-blotches rushed within a span of her forehead. She met this symptom promptly with a medical receipt; yet she had no sleep; nor would coffee give her sleep. She shrank from opium as deleterious to the constitution, and her mind settled on music as the remedy.
Some time after her craving for it had commenced, an Austrian foot regiment, marching to the drum, passed under her windows. The fife is a merry instrument; fife and drum colour the images of battle gaily; but the dull ringing Austrian step-drum, beating unaccompanied, strikes the mind with the real nature of battles, as the salt smell of powder strikes it, and more in horror, more as a child’s imagination realizes bloodshed, where the scene is a rolling heaven, black and red on all sides, with pitiable men moving up to the mouth of butchery, the insufferable flashes, the dark illumination of red, red of black, like a vision of the shadows Life and Death in a shadow-fight over the dear men still living. Sensitive minds may be excited by a small stimulant to see such pictures. This regimental drum is like a song of the flat-headed savage in man. It has no rise or fall, but leads to the bloody business with an unvarying note, and a savage’s dance in the middle of the rhythm. Violetta listened to it until her heart quickened with alarm lest she should be going to have a fever. She thought of Carlo Ammiani, and of the name of Nagen; she had seen him at the Lenkensteins. Her instant supposition was that Anna had perhaps paid heavily for the secret of Carlo’s movements an purpose to place Major Nagen on the Brescian high-road to capture him. Capture meant a long imprisonment, if not execution. Partly for the sake of getting peace of mind—for she was shocked by her temporary inability to command repose—but with some hope of convincing Carlo that she strove to be of use to him, she sent for the spy Luigi, and at a cost of two hundred and twenty Austrian florins, obtained his promise upon oath to follow Count Ammiani into Brescia, if necessary, and deliver to him a letter she had written, wherein Nagen’s name was mentioned, and Carlo was advised to avoid personal risks; the letter hinted that he might have incurred a private enmity, and he had better keep among his friends. She knew the writing of this letter to be the foolishest thing she had ever done. Two hundred and twenty florins—the man originally stipulated to have three hundred—was a large sum to pay for postage. However, sacrifices must now and then be made for friendship, and for sleep. When she had paid half the money, her mind was relieved, and she had the slumber which preserves beauty. Luigi was to be paid the other half on his return. “He may never return,” she thought, while graciously dismissing him. The deduction by mental arithmetic of the two hundred and twenty, or the one hundred and ten florins, from the large amount Countess Anna was bound to pay her in turn, annoyed her, though she knew it was a trifle. For this lady, Milan, Turin, and Paris sighed deeply.