THE SUMMIT AND THE STARS.
"Aucassins, biax amis doux
En quel terre en irons nous?
--Douce amie, que sai jou?
Moi ne caut u nous aillons,
En forest u en destor,
Mais que je soie aveuc vous!"
_Aucassin and Nicolete.
"E quindi uscimmo a riveder le stelle."
_Dante_.
I awoke to a hum of voices . . . but when my eyes opened, the
speakers were gone, and I lay staring at an open window beyond which
the sky shone, blue and deep as a well. On a chair beside the window
sat the Princess, her hands in her lap. . . . While I stared at her,
two strange fancies played together in my mind like couples crossing
in a dance; the first, that she sat there waiting for something to
happen, and had been waiting for a very long, an endless, while; the
other that her body had grown transparent. The sunlight seemed to
float through it as through a curtain.
I dare say that I lay incapable of movement; but this did not
distress me at all, for I felt no desire to stir--only a contentment,
deep as the sky outside, to rest there and let my eyes rest on her.
Yet either I must have spoken or (yes, the miracle was no less
likely!) she heard my thoughts; for she lifted her head and, rising,
came towards me. As she drew close, her form appeared to expand,
shutting out the light . . . and I drifted back into darkness.
By-and-by the light glimmered again. I seemed to be rising to it,
this time, like a drowned man out of deep water; drowned, not
drowning, for I felt no struggle, but rather stood apart from my body
and watched it ascending, the arms held downwards, rigid, the palms
touching its thighs--until at the surface, on the top of a wave, my
will rejoined it and forced it to look. Then I knew that I had been
mistaken. The sky was there, deep as a well; and, as before, it
shone through an opening; and the opening had a rounded top like the
arch of a window; yet it was not a window. As before, my love sat
between me and the light, and the light shone through her. My bed
rocked a little under me, and for a while I fancied myself on board
the _Gauntlet_, laid in my bunk and listening to the rolling of her
loose ballast--until my ear distinguished and recognized the sound
for that of wheels, a low rumble through which a horse's footfall
plodded, beating time.
I was scarcely satisfied of this before the sound grew indistinct
again and became a murmur of voices. The arch that framed the
sunlight widened; the sky drew nearer, breaking into vivid separate
tinctures--orange, blood-red, sapphire-blue; and at the same time the
Princess receded and diminished in stature. . . . The frame was a
window again, and she a figure on a coloured pane, shining there in a
company of saints and angels. But her voice remained beside me,
speaking with another voice in a great emptiness.
The other voice--a man's--talked most of the while. I could not
follow what it said, but by-and-by caught a single word, "Milano";
and again two words, "The mountains" and yet again, but after an
interval, "The people are poor; they give nothing; from year's end to
year's end"--and the voice prolonged itself like an echo, repeating
the words until, as they died away, they seemed to measure out the
time.
"The more reason why _you_--" began the Princess's voice.
"There shall be spared one--a little one--for Our Lady."
But here I felt myself drifting off once more. I was as one afloat
in a whirlpool, now carried near to a straw and anon swept away as I
clutched at it.
The eddy brought me round again to the window that was no window, the
rumble of wheels, the plodding of a horse's hoofs. Beyond the low
arch--or was it a pent?--shone a star or two, and against their pale
radiance a shadow loomed--the shadow of the Princess, still seated,
still patient, still with her hands in her lap. The rumble of the
wheels, the slow rocking of my bed beneath me, fitted themselves to
the intermittent flash of the stars, and beat out a rhythm in my
memory--a rhythm, and by degrees the words to fit it--
"Tanto ch'io vidi delle cose belle
Che porta il ciel, per un pertugio tondo,
E quindi uscimmo a riveder le stelle."
_A riveder le stelle_--I closed my eyes, opened them again, and lo!
the stars were gone. In their place shone pale dawn, touching the
grey-white arch of a tilt-waggon, on the floor of which I lay in a
deep litter of straw. But still by the tilt, between me and the
dawn, rested my love, and drowsed, still patient, her hands in her
lap.
"At last! At last!"
She called to the driver--I could not see him, for I lay with my face
to the tilt--and he pulled up his horse with a jolt. Belike he had
been slumbering, and with the same jolt awoke himself. I tried to
lift a hand--I think to brush away the illusion of the window and its
painted panes.
Maybe, slight as it was, she mistook the movement to mean that I felt
stifled under the hood of the waggon and wanted air. At any rate,
she called again, and the driver (I have clean forgotten his face),
left his reins and came around to her. Between them they lifted me
out and laid me on a bank between the road and a water-course that
ran beside it. I heard the water rippling, near by, and presently
felt the cool, delicious touch of it as she dipped up a little in her
hollowed palms and moistened my bandages.
Our waggon had come to a halt in the very centre (as it seemed) of a
great plain, criss-crossed with dykes and lines of trees, and dotted
with distant hamlets. The hamlets twinkled in the fresh daylight,
and in the nearest one--a mile back on the road--a fine campanile
stood up against the sun, which pierced through three windows in its
topmost story. So flat was the plain that mere sky filled
nine-tenths of the prospect; and all the wide dome of it tinkled with
the singing of larks.
"_Ma dove? dove?_ . . ."
The Princess pointed, and far on the road, miles beyond the waggon,
I saw that which no man, sick or hale, sees for the first time in his
life without a lift of the heart--the long glittering rampart of the
Alps.
"Do we cross them?"
"_Pianu_. . . . In time, O beloved; thou and I . . . all in good
time."
I gazed up at her, half-frightened by the tenderness in her voice;
and what I saw frightened me wholly. The sullenness had gone from
her eyes; as a mother upon the child in her lap, so she looked down
upon me; but her face was wan, even in the warm sunlight, and
pinched, and hollow-eyed. I lifted her hand--a little way only, my
own being so weak. It was frail, transparent, as though wasted by
very hunger.
She read the question I could not ask, and answered it with a brave
laugh. (It appeared, then, that she had taught herself to laugh.)
"We have been sick, thou and I. The mountains will cure us."
I looked along the road towards them, then up at her again.
I remembered afterwards that though she spoke so cheerfully of the
mountains, her gaze had turned from them, to travel back across the
plain.
"A little while!" she went on. "We must wait a little while to
recover our strength. But there are friends yonder, to help us."
"Friends?" I echoed, wondering that I possessed any.
"You must leave all talk to me," she commanded; "and, if you are
rested, we ought not to sit idling here." She helped the driver to
lift me back into the waggon, where, as it moved on, she seated
herself in the straw and took my hand. All her shyness had gone,
with all her sullenness.
"There is a farm," began she, "a bare twelve leagues from here, says
the waggoner, who knows it. I carry a letter to the farmer from his
brother, who is the parish priest of Trecate, and a good man.
He says that his brother, too, is a good man, and will show us
kindness for his sake, because the farm once belonged to my friend,
as the elder, until he gave it up to follow God. The pair have not
met since twenty years; for Trecate lies not far from Milan, and the
farm is deep in the mountains, above a village called Domodossola,
where the folk are no travellers. . . ."
Here her voice faded into a dream again; for a very little waking
wearied me, then and for weeks to come, and the word Milano brought
back the church, the stained window, the priest's voice talking, and
confused all these with the rumbling of the waggon. But I held my
love's hand, and that was enough.
We came that same evening to the shore of a lake, beautiful as a pool
dropped out of Paradise, and the next day crawled uphill, hour after
hour, over a jolting road to the village, where I lay while the
driver climbed to the farm with the Princess's letter. He was gone
five hours, but returned with the farmer, and the farmer's tall
eldest son; and the pair had brought a litter, in which to carry me
home.
The name of this good man was Bavarello--Giacomo Bavarello--and he
lived with his wife Battestina in a house full of lean children and
live-stock. The house had deep overhanging eaves, held down by cords
and weighted with rocks; but this must have been rather in deference
to the custom of the country than as a precaution against storms, for
the farmstead lay cosily in a dingle of the mountain, where storms
never reached it. Yet it took the sun from earliest dawn almost to
the last beam of midsummer daylight. Behind it a pine forest climbed
to the snow; and up and across the snow a corniced path traversed the
face of the mountain and joined the _diligence_-road a little below
the summit of the pass. At the point of junction stood a small
chapel, with a dwelling-room attached, where lived a brother from the
Benedictine _hospice_ on the far side of the pass. His name was
Brother Polifilo, and it was supposed that he had fallen in love with
solitude (else how could he have endured to live in such a place?);
yet his smile justified his name, and his manner of playing with the
children when he descended to bring us the consolations of religion--
which he did by arrangement with the infirm parish priest in the
valley. Also, on fine mornings when the snow held and the little
ones could be trusted along the path, the entire household of the
Bavarelli would troop up to Mass in his tiny chapel.
For me, it was many weeks before my sick brain allowed me to climb
beyond the pines; and many weeks, though the Princess always went
with me--before she told me all the story of what had happened in
Genoa. Yet we talked much, at one time and another, though we were
silent more; for the silences told more. Only our talk and our
silences were always of the present. It was understood that the
whole story of the past would come, some day, when I had strength for
it. Of the future we never spoke. I could not then have told why;
though now all too well I can.
Sick man though I was, bliss filled those days for me, and their
memory is steeped in bliss. Yet a thought began, after a while, to
trouble me. We were living on these poor Bavarelli, and, for aught I
knew, paying them not a penny. The good farmer might be grateful to
his priest-brother down yonder; but even if his gratitude were
inexhaustible we--strangers as we were--ought not to test it so.
To be sure, he and his wife wore a smile for us, morning and
evening--and this, though I had a notion that Donna Battestina was of
a saving disposition. I had heard the pair of them protest when the
Princess offered to make herself useful in the farm-work--for which
she was plainly unfit--or, failing that, in the housework. They had
made up their minds about us, that we were persons of gentle blood,
to whom all work must be derogatory.
The next day I insisted on climbing the slope to the pine-wood
without support of her arm.
"It is time," said I, "that I grew strong; unless somewhere you are
hiding a fairy purse."
She looked at me--for between us, by this time, one spoken word would
be the key to a dozen unspoken. "You are not fit to start," she
stammered hastily, "nor will be for a long while. There are
mountains behind these, and again more mountains--" She broke off
and sat down upon a pine-log, trembling.
"I was not thinking of that," said I; "but of these people and their
hospitality. Since we have no money I must work for them--at least,
until I can get money sent from England."
She glanced at me again, and with a shiver up at the snow peaks
beyond the pines. I could read that she struggled with something,
deep within her, and I waited. By-and-by she leaned forward, clasped
her hands about her knee, and sat silent for a long minute, gazing
southward over the plain at our feet.
"Listen," she said at length, but without turning her eyes. "I have
something to confess to you." Her voice dragged upon the words; but
she went on, "You have not asked me what has happened in Genoa
after--that night. The snow covered up our footmarks and the
blood--for you were bleeding all the way; but at our lodgings the
actors were frightened out of their wits, and worse than ever when I
told them what had happened to Marc'antonio and Stephanu. They would
all be arrested, they declared; the Bank of Genoa had eyes all over
the city. Nevertheless one of them showed great courage. It was
that strange friend of yours, Messer' Badcock. My first thought was
to get you down to the boat and slip away to sea; and he offered--he
alone--first of all to make his way to the harbour and bring word if
the coast (as he said) was clear. He went very cautiously, by way of
a cellar leading under our house and the next, and opening on a back
street--this, that his steps might not be traced to the front door;
and it was well that he went, for on the quay, hiding behind a stack
of timber, he saw two men in uniform posted at the head of the
water-stairs. So he hastened back, using less caution, because by
this time the snow had smoothed over his tracks, and was falling
faster every moment. The actors had already begun to pack, and
Messer' Fazio was running about in a twitter, albeit he declared
that, beside themselves, not a soul in Genoa knew of his having
lodged these Corsicans. Doubtless, however, his house would be
searched in the morning, and the important, the pressing need was to
get rid of us.
"In his haste he could think of nothing better than an old
onion-loft, some sixty paces up the lane at the back. It was a store
merely, not connected with any house, but owned by a rich merchant of
the city who had acquired it for some debt and straightway forgotten
all about it--at least, so Messer' Fazio declared. If we were
discovered in hiding there, it could be explained that we had found
it, and used it for a lodging, asking no man's leave; and suspicion
would fall on no good citizen.
"I made sure that you were dying, and for myself I was past caring;
so I thanked him and told him to do with us as he thought best.
He and Messer' Badcock carried you out then, and I followed.
The building was of two floors, with a door to each. A flight of
steps led from the lane to the upper door, which was padlocked; and
no one had used that way for twenty years, or so the landlord said.
We entered by the lower door, which was broken--both hasp and hinge--
and led straight from the lane into a dirty cellar, worse than any
cowshed and paved with mud. But from this a ladder rested against
the wooden ceiling, and just above it was a plank that had worked
loose. Messer' Fazio slipped the plank aside, and with great pains
we carried you up through the opening and into the loft. I had
bandaged your head so that we left no traces of blood in the lane or
on the floor below. Then Messer' Fazio gathered up some onions which
were strewn on the floor--I believe he had been drying them there on
the sly--and took leave of us in a hurry. When he reached the bottom
again, he carried away the ladder, declaring that it belonged to him.
"I had brought with me but a loaf of bread, a flask of milk, and one
thing else--I will tell you what that was, by-and-by. I sat by you,
waiting for you to die. When morning came I forced you to drink some
of the milk. The loft was bitterly cold, and I wondered indeed that
you were not dead.
"Towards evening I felt faint with hunger, and was gnawing a piece of
my loaf, when a voice spoke up to me from below. It was a woman's
voice, and I took it at first for Lauretta's--she was the girl, you
remember, who played the confidante's part and such-like. But when I
pulled the plank a little aside and looked down, I saw a girl unknown
to me--until I recognized her for one of those who lived above the
archway at the entrance of Messer' Fazio's court. Lauretta had told
her, swearing her to be secret, and she was here in pity. She called
herself Gioconda; and I bless her, for your sake.
"She fetched me bread, milk, and a little wine. But for her--for
Messer' Fazio came never near us, and the actors, she told me, had
decamped--we should both have perished. The cold lasted for ten
days; I cannot tell how you endured it; but at the end of them I
hoped you might recover, and with that I tried to think of some plan
for escaping from Genoa. The worst was, I had no money. . . ."
The Princess paused, and shivered a little.
"That cold . . . it is in my bones yet. I feel as though the least
touch of it now would kill me . . . and I want to live. Ah, my love,
turn your eyes from me while I tell you what next I did!
The crown . . . it belonged to Corsica. I had denied your right to
it; but you had won it back from dishonour, and I remembered that in
the band of it were jewels, the price of which might save you.
Moreover, the little that kept us from starving came from--those
women; and it was hateful to owe them even for a little bread.
So I felt then. Afterwards--But you shall hear; only turn away your
eyes. I prayed to the Virgin, but my prayers seemed to get no clear
answer. . . . Then I pulled a staple from the wall, and with the
point of it prised out one of the jewels, an amethyst. . . . I had
spoken already to Gioconda. That evening she brought me one of her
dresses, with shoes, stockings, and underskirt; a mirror, too, and
brush and comb, with paints, powders, and black stuff for the
eye-lashes, all in the same bundle, which she passed up through the
floor. I dressed myself, painted my face, tired my hair, till I
looked like even such a woman as Gioconda; and then, letting myself
down at dark by a rope made of the sheet I drew from under you, I ran
through the streets to the quarter of the merchants. La Gioconda had
forgotten to pack a cloak in the bundle; the night was snowing, with
snow underfoot; and I had run past the quays before the fear struck
me that, at so late an hour, the jewellers would have closed their
shops. But in the street behind the Dogano I found one open, and the
jeweller asked no questions. It appeared that he was used to such
women, and, having examined the stone through his magnifying-glass,
he counted me out three hundred livres.
"I ran back, faster than I had come, and climbed to the loft, hand
over hand, with the money weighing me down. It was in my mind to
bribe one of the market-women, through Gioconda, to smuggle you out
through the North Gate, under the baskets in her cart. But the day
had scarcely broken before Gioconda came (and she had never come yet
until evening) with terrible news. She said that I must count on her
no more, for the accursed clericals (as she called them) had made
interest with the Genoese Government to clear all the stews, and that
she and her sisters by the gateway had orders to be quit of the city
within twenty-four hours; in fact her sisters had begun to pack
already, and the whole party would drive away, with their belongings,
soon after night-fall. I asked her whither. 'To Milan,' she said;
for at Turin the Church was even stronger and more bigoted than in
Genoa.
"A new thought came to me then. I handed down my money to Gioconda,
keeping back only a little, and prayed her to go to the woman, her
mistress, and bargain with her to carry you out of the city,
concealed beneath the furniture. The girl clapped her hands at the
notion, and ran, but in an hour's time came creeping back in tears.
The woman would have more money--even threatened to betray us unless
I found her five hundred livres in all. . . .
"I borrowed Gioconda's shawl and sent her away, charging her to
return before evening. Then I loosened another stone from the
crown--a sardonyx--and again I went out through the streets to the
jeweller's. It was worse now than by night, for the people stared,
and certain men followed me. I took them for spies at first; but
presently my stupid brain cleared, and I guessed for what they
mistook me; and then I kept them at their distance, using such tricks
as in Brussels I had seen the women use. . . ."
"O brave one! O beloved!"
I stretched out my hand, but she turned from the caress, and hurried
on with her tale, her eyes still fastened on the distant plain, her
voice held level on the tone of a child reciting its task.
"The jeweller, too, asked many questions. I think he was suspicious
at my coming twice in a few hours. But the sardonyx was a finer
stone than the amethyst, and he ended by giving me three hundred and
fifty livres. Two of the men were loitering for me outside the shop.
I gave them a false address and walked home quickly, longing to run
but not daring. To mislead the men, in case they were following, I
made first for the house by the archway, and there on the stairs I
met the woman coming down with a bundle of stuff.
"I bargained with her, then and there. There was a horrible man
belonging to the house, and at night-fall he fetched you, a little
before the carts arrived; and this was not a minute too soon.
For a crowd came with the carts. While the loading went on they
stood around the door, calling out vile jokes, and afterwards they
followed through the streets, waving torches and beating upon old
pans. I sat in the second cart, among half a dozen women.
My face was painted, and I smiled when they smiled. But you lay
under the straw at my feet; and when the gate was passed, while the
women were calling back insults to the soldiers there, I gave thanks
to Our Lady.
"Beloved, that is my story. At Tortona I parted from the women, and
hired the waggon which brought us the rest of the way. But I had
done better, perhaps, to go with them to Milan, as Gioconda advised.
For my money began to run low, and, save Milan, there was no large
town on the road where I could sell another jewel. Yet here again
Our Lady helped; for at Trecate I found the good priest, the brother
of these Bavarelli, and he, having heard my tale, offered to travel
to Milan and do my business. So I parted with two more of the
stones; and yet a third--a little one--I gave him for Our Lady of
Trecate, as a thank-offering. We have money enough to reward these
good people, though they lodge us for yet another six months; but the
crown has only one stone remaining. It is a diamond--set in the very
front of the band--and, I think, more valuable than all the rest."
Her voice came to a halt. "O beloved," she asked after a while,
quietly, almost desperately, "why are you silent? Can you not
forgive?"
"Forgive?" I echoed. "Dear, I was silent, being lost in wonder, in
love. Forget that foolish crown; forget even Corsica! Soon we will
take the diamond and cross the mountains together, to a kingdom
better than Corsica. There," I wound up, forcing myself to speak
lightly, "if ever dispute should arise between us, as king and queen
we will ask my uncle Gervase to decide. He, gallant man, will say,
'Prosper, to whom do you owe your life?' . . ."
"The mountains? Ah, not yet--not yet!" She put out her hands and
crept to me blindly, nestling, pressing her face against my ragged
coat. "A little while," she sobbed while I held her so. "A little
while!--until the child--until our child--"
How can I write what yet remains to be written?
Our child was never born. So often, hand in hand, we had climbed to
the pine-woods that it escaped my notice how she, who had used to be
my support, came by degrees to lean on my arm. I saw her broken by
fasting and vigil, and for me, I winced at the sound of her cough.
The blood on her handkerchief accused me. "But we must wait until
the child is born," I promised myself, "and the mountain air will
quickly cure her." Fool! the good farm-people knew better. While I
gained strength, day by day she was wasting. "Only let us cross the
mountains," I prayed, "and at home all my life shall pay for her
love!" Fool, again! She would never cross the mountains, now.
There came a day when I climbed the pine-wood alone. With my new
strength, and because her weight was not on my arm, I climbed higher
than usual; and then the noise of chopping drew me on to the upper
edge of the forest, where I found Brother Polifilo with his sleeves
rolled, hacking at a tree. He dropped his axe and stared at me, as
at a ghost. I could not guess what perturbed him; for he had called
at the farm but the day before and heard me boast of my new strength.
I sat down to watch him. But after a stroke or two his arm appeared
to fail him, and he desisted. Without a word, almost without looking
at me, he laid the axe over his shoulder and went up the path towards
his chapel.
I gazed after him, wondering. Then, of a sudden, I understood.
Three days later she died. To the end they could not persuade me it
was possible; nay at the very end, while she lay panting against my
arm, I could not believe.
She died quietly--so quietly. A little before the end she had been
restless, lying with a pucker on her brow, and eyes that asked
pitiably for something--I could not guess what, until she turned them
to the chair, over the back of which (for the day was sultry), I had
tossed my coat.
I reached for the coat and slipped it on. Her eyes grew glad at
once.
"Closer!" she whispered. As I bent closer, she nestled her face
against it. "_La macchia! . . . la macchia!_"
With that last breath, drawing in the scent of it, she laid her head
slowly back, and slept.
The Bavarelli took it for granted that I would bury her in the
graveyard, down the valley. But I consulted with Brother Polifilo.
I argued that every high mountain-top by its very nature came within
the definition of consecrated ground; and after a show of reluctance
he accepted the heresy, on condition I allowed him first to visit the
spot chosen and recite the prayer of consecration over it.
We laid her in the coffin that Brother Polifilo brought, and carried
her to the summit of the mountain overlooking the pass, where the
rock had allowed us to dig the shallowest of graves. Beside it, when
the coffin was covered, I said good-bye to the Bavarelli and
dismissed them down the hill. They understood that I had yet a word
to speak to the good monk.
"One thing remains," I said, and showed him the crown with the five
empty settings, and the one diamond yet glittering in its band.
"Help me to build a cairn," said I.
So he helped me. We built a tall cairn, and I laid the crown within
it.
The sun was setting as we laid the last stone in place. We walked in
silence down to the pass, and there I shook hands with him by the
little chapel, and received his blessing before setting my face
northwards.
I dare say that he stood for a long while, watching me as I descended
the curves of the road. But I never once looked back until I had
crossed the valley, far below. The great peak rose behind me; and it
seemed to me that on its summit a diamond shone amongst the stars.
POSTSCRIPT.
BY GERVASE ARUNDEL.
July 15 (St. Swithun's), 1761.
My nephew has asked me to write the few words necessary to conclude
this narrative.
The day after my brother's burial, the _Gauntlet_, in company with
General Paoli's gunboat, _Il Sampiero_, weighed and left the island
of Giraglia for Isola Rossa, where by agreement we were to wait one
calendar month before sailing for England.
The foregoing pages will sufficiently explain why the month passed
without my nephew's putting in an appearance. For my part, albeit my
arguments had been powerless to dissuade him from going to Genoa, I
never expected him to return, but consoled myself with the knowledge
that he had gone to his fate in a good cause, and in a spirit not
unworthy of his father.
We were highly indebted during our stay at Isola Rossa to the
General, who, being detained there by the business of his new
fortifications, exerted himself that we should not lack a single
comfort, and seemed to inspire a like solicitude in his subjects.
I call the Corsicans his subjects since (if the reflection may be
permitted) I never met a man who carried a more authentic air of
kingliness--and I am not forgetting my own dear brother-in-law.
Alive, these two men met face to face but once; and Priske, who
witnessed the meeting, yet understood but a bare word or two of what
was said, will have it that for dignity of bearing the General would
not compare with his master. The honest fellow may be right; for
certainly no one could speak with John Constantine and doubt that
here was one of a line of kings. Nevertheless to me
(a matter-of-fact man), Paoli appeared scarcely less imposing in
person, and withal bore himself with a businesslike calm which, in a
subtle way I cannot describe, seemed to tolerate the others, yet
suggest that, beside his own purpose, theirs were something unreal.
As an Englishman I should say that he felt the weight of public
opinion behind him all the while, without which in these days the
kingliest nature must miss something of gravity. Yet he has proved
more than once that no public man can be more quixotic, upon
occasion.
It distressed me to find that the Queen Emilia would have none of his
courtesies; as I think it distressed him, though he comported himself
perfectly. She rejected, and not too graciously, his offer to
restore her to her palace at Casalabriva and secure her there against
all enemies. From the first she had determined, failing her son's
return, to sail with us to England; and sail she did.
But from the first I doubted her reaching it alive. Her sufferings
had worn her out, and it is a matter of dispute between Dom Basilio
(who administered the last sacrament), and me whether or no her eyes
ever saw the home to which we carried her. They were open, and she
was certainly breathing, when we made the entrance of Helford river;
for we had lifted her couch upon deck and propped her that she might
catch the earliest glimpse of Constantine above the trees. They were
open when we dropped anchor, but she was as certainly dead. She lies
buried in the private chapel of the house, disused during my
brother-in-law's lifetime, but since restored and elaborately
decorated by our Trappist guests. A slab of rose-pink Corsican
granite covers her, and is inscribed with the words, "Orate pro anima
Emiliae, Corsicorum Reginae," the date of her death, and beneath it a
verse which I took to be from the Vulgate until Parson Grylls
quarrelled with Dom Basilio over it--
"CRAS AMET QVI NVNQVAM AMAVIT QVIQVE AMAVIT CRAS AMET."
As I have said, I had parted with all hope to see my nephew again:
and it but confirmed my despair when I received a letter from General
Paoli with news that the Prince Camillo had been assassinated; for
neither his sister nor Prosper had said word to me of the young man's
treachery, and I concluded that they had bound themselves to rescue
him, an unwilling prisoner. In our last brief leave-taking on the
island, Prosper had confided to me certain wishes of his concerning
the house at Constantine, and the disposal of his estate; wishes of
which I need only say here that they obliged me after a certain
interval to get his death "presumed" (as the phrase is), and for that
purpose to ride up to London and seek counsel with our lawyer, Mr.
Knox.
I arrived in London early in the second week of November, 1760--a
few days after the decease of our King George II.; and, my business
with Mr. Knox drawing to a conclusion, it came into my head to
procure a ticket and go visit the Prince's chamber, near the House of
Peers, where his Majesty's body lay in state. This was on the very
afternoon of the funeral, that would start for the Abbey after
nightfall, and at Westminster I found a throng already gathered in
the mud and murk. In the _chambre ardente_, which was hung with
purple, a score of silver lamps depended from the roof around a tall
purple canopy, under which the corpse reposed in its open coffin,
flanked with six immense silver candelabra. Between the candelabra
and at the head and foot of the coffin stood six gigantic soldiers of
the guard, rigid as statues, with bowed heads and arms reversed.
Only their eyes moved, and I dare say that I stared at them in
something like terror. Certainly a religious awe held me as the
pressure of the sightseers carried me forth from the doors again and
into the street, where I wedged myself into the crowd, and waited for
the procession. By this time a fog had rolled up from the river, and
the foot-guards who lined the road had begun to light their torches.
Behind them were drawn up the horse-guards, their officers erect in
saddle, with naked sabres and heavy scarves of crape. There amid the
sounds of minute guns, and of bells tolling I must have waited a full
hour before the procession came by--the fifes, the muffled drums, the
yeomen of the guard staggering with the great coffin, the
pall-bearers and peers walking two and two, with pages bearing their
heavy trains. All this I watched as it went by, and with a mind so
shaken that a hand from behind had plucked twice or thrice at my
elbow before I was aware that any one claimed my attention.
Then, turning with a moisture in my eyes--for the organ had begun to
sound within the abbey--I found myself staring past the torch of a
foot-guard and into the face of my nephew, risen from the dead!
He was haggard, unkempt in his hair and dress, and (I think) had been
fasting for a long while without being aware of his hunger. He drew
me back and away from the crowd; but when I had embraced him, it
seemed that to all my eager questions he had nothing to answer.
"I was starting for Cornwall, to-morrow," he said. "Shall we travel
together?" And then, as though painfully recollecting, he passed a
hand over his forehead and added, "I have walked half-way across
Europe. I am a good walker by this time."
"We will hire horses, to be sure," said I, finding nothing better to
say.
The age, the lines in his young face cut me to the heart, and I
longed to ask concerning the Princess, but dared not.
"Horses? Ah, yes, to be sure, I come back to riches. Nay, my dear
uncle, you are going to tell me that the estates are mortgaged deep
as ever--I know. But allow me to tell you there is all the world's
difference between poverty that is behindhand with its interest, and
poverty that has to trust God for its next meal."
At the eating-house to which I carried him he held out his scarred
palms to me across the table.
"They have worked my way for me from the Alps," said he. "I left my
crown there, and"--he laughed wearily--"I come back to find another
monarch in the act of laying aside a greater one. My God!
The vanity of it!"
He drank off a glass of wine. "Find me a bed, Uncle Gervase," said
he. "I feel that I can sleep the clock round."
We rode out of London next day. He started in a fret to be home, but
this impatience declined by the way, and by the time we crossed Tamar
had sunk to a lethargy. Sore was I to mark the dull gaze he lifted
(by habit) at the corner of the road where Constantine comes into
view; and sorer the morning after, when, having put gun into his hand
and packed him off with Diana, the old setter, at his heel, I met him
an hour later returning dejectedly to the house. For the next three
or four months he went listless as a man dragging a wounded limb.
But since spring brought back rod and angle, I think and pray that
the voice of running water (best medicine in Nature) begins to cure
him. He has written the foregoing narrative in a hot fit which,
while it lasted, more than once kept his lamp burning till daybreak;
and although the last chapter was no sooner finished than he flung
the whole away in disgust. I have hopes of him. I may even live to
see a child running about these silent terraces . . . But this, my
dearest wish, outruns all present indications; and if Prosper ever
marries again it will be as his father married, and not for love.[1]
By good fortune I am able to supply the reader with some later news
of two members of the expedition, Mr. Fett and Mr. Badcock. It came
to me, early this summer, in the following letter:--
_To Gervase Arundel, Esq., of Constantine in Cornwall, England_.
"Venice.
Ash Wednesday (4.30 a.m.), 1761.
"Excellent Sir,
"I take up my pen, and lay aside the false nose I have been
wearing night and day for close on a week, to make a
communication which will doubtless interest you as it has
profoundly affected me. It will also interest your nephew and
his lady (whose hands I kiss) if they succeeded in effecting
their escape to England--where, failing news of them, I do
myself a frequent pleasure to picture them at rest upon the
quiet waters of domestic felicity. But I address myself rather
to you, whom (albeit on the briefest acquaintance) I shall ever
regard as the personification of stability and mild repose.
Heracleitus and his followers may prate of a world of flux; but
there are men to whom the recollections of their fellows ever
turn confidently, secure of finding them in the same place; and
of such, sir, you are the palmary example among my
acquaintance.
"On the circumstances of our retreat from Genoa I need not
dilate. We decamped--I and my brother _artistes_--to Pisa,
where, after an unsatisfactory season, we broke up our company
by mutual consent and went our various ways in search of
fortune. Mr. Badcock--by this time a pantaloon of considerable
promise and not to be sneezed at in senile parts where
affection or natural decay required, or at least excused, a
broken accent--threw in his lot with me: and we bent our steps
together upon this unique city, where for close upon twelve
months I have drawn a respectable salary as Director of Public
Festivities to the Sisterhood of the Conventual Body of Santa
Chiara. Nor is the post a sinecure; since these estimable
women, though themselves vowed against earthly delights,
possess a waterside garden which, periodically--and especially
in the week preceding Lent--they throw open to the public; a
practice from which they derive unselfish pleasure and a useful
advertisement.
"On Thursday last, the Giovedi Grasso, the Abbess had (in
consultation with me) provided an entertainment which not only
attracted the rank and fashion of Venice but (I will dare to
say) made them forget the exhaustion of the maddest day of
carnival with its bull-baiting and battles of _confetti_.
An hour before midnight all Venice had taken to its gondolas
and was being swept, with song and music, towards the Giudecca.
The lagoons swam with the reflections of a thousand moving
lanterns, and all their streaming ribbons of light converged
upon the bridge of Santa Chiara, beyond which, where the
gardens descended in stairways of marble to the water, I had
lined the banks with coloured lamps. Discreet narrow
water-alleys, less flauntingly lit, but with here and there a
caged nightingale singing in the boscage, intersected the
sisters' pleasure-grounds; but the main canal led around an
ample stretch of turf in the midst of which my workmen had
reared a stage for a masque of my composing, entitled _The Rape
of Helen_. Badcock, who was to enact the part of Menelaus, had
at my request attired himself early, for some few of my
nightingales were young birds and not to be depended on, and I
had an idea of concealing him in the shrubberies to supply a
_flauto obbligato_ while our guests arrived. I had interrupted
my instructions to despatch him on some small errand connected
with the coloured fires, and he had scarcely disappeared among
the laurels, when along the path came strolling two figures I
recognized as fellow-countrymen--the young Lord Algernon
Shafto, of the English embassy, and his mother's brother, the
Venerable John Kynaston Worley, Archdeacon of Wells.
Lord Algernon wore a domino. His uncle (I need scarcely say)
had made no innovation upon the laced hat and gaiters proper to
his archidiaconal rank--though it is likely enough that the
Venetians found this costume as eccentric as any in the throng.
He had arrived in the city a bare week before; and walked with
an arm paternally thrust in his nephew's, while he made
acquaintance with the luxurious frivolities of a Venetian
carnival.
"As they passed me I stooped to trim the peccant wick of one of
the many lamps disposed like glowworms along the path: but a
moment later their voices told me that my countrymen had found
a seat a few paces away, in an arbour whence, by the rays of a
paper lantern which overhung it, they could observe the
passers-by.
"'A wonderful nation,' the Archdeacon was saying, in that
resonant voice of which the well-connected among the Anglican
clergy (and their wives) alone possess the secret. 'I may tell
you, my dear lad, that this visit to Venice has been a dream of
my life, cherished though long deferred. I had not your
advantages when I was a young man. The Grand Tour was denied
me; and a country curacy with an increasing family promised to
remove the realization of my dream to the Greek Kalends.
But in all those years I never quite lost sight of it.
There is a bull-dog tenacity in us British: and still from time
to time I renewed the promise to myself that, should I survive
my dear wife--as I hoped to do--'
"Here, having trimmed my lantern, I straightened myself up to
find that Mr. Badcock had returned and was standing behind my
shoulder. To my amazement he was trembling like an aspen.
"'Hush!' said he, when I would have asked what ailed him.
"I listened. I suppose Lord Algernon responded with a polite
hope that Venice fulfilled his uncle's long expectation: but I
could not catch the words.
"'Entirely so,' was the reply. 'I may even say that it surpasses
them. Such an experience enlarges the mind, the--er--outlook.
And if a man of sixty can confess so much, how happy should you
be, my dear Algy, to have received these impressions at _your_
age! Yet, my dear lad, remember they are of value only when
received upon a previous basis of character. The ladies, for
instance, who own these delightful grounds . . . doubtless they
are devout, in their way, but in a way how far removed from
those God-fearing English traditions which one day, as a
landlord among your tenantry and to that extent responsible for
the welfare of dependent souls, it will be yours to foster!'
"Here, warned by a choking cry, I put out a hand to catch Mr.
Badcock by the sleeve of his pallium: but too late! With a wild
gesture he broke loose from me and plunged down the pergola
towards the arbour, at the entrance of which he flung himself
on his knees.
"'Oh, sir!' he panted, abasing himself and stretching forth both
hands to the archidiaconal gaiters. 'Oh, sir, have pity!
Teach me to be saved!'
"The Archdeacon (I will say) after the momentary shock rose to
the occasion like a sportsman. A glance sufficed to assure him
that the poor creature was in earnest, and with great presence
of mind he felt in his pocket for a visiting-card.
"'Certainly, my good fellow, certainly . . . if you will call on
me to-morrow at my lodgings . . . two doors from the
embassy. . . . Dear me, how provoking! Would you mind,
Algernon, lending me one of your cards? I remember now leaving
mine on the dressing-table.'
"He fished out a pencil, took the card his nephew proffered and,
having written down name and address, handed it to Badcock.
"'The door of grace, my friend, stands ever open to him who
knocks. . . . Shall we say at ten-thirty to-morrow morning?
Yes, yes, a very convenient hour for me, if you have no
objection? Farewell, then, until to-morrow!' With a
benedictory wave of the hand he linked arms with Lord Algernon
and strolled away down the walk.
"'Badcock,' said I, stepping forward and clapping a hand on his
shoulder. 'Hark to the gong calling you to the masque!'
"But the creature stood as in a trance. 'His signature!' he
answered in an awed whisper. 'The Archdeacon of Wells's own
signature, and upon Lord Algernon's card!'--and I declare to
you that he fell to kissing the pasteboard ecstatically.
"Well, he was past all reason. Luckily, having written it, I
had his part by rote; and so, snatching his Menelaus' wig and
beard, I ran towards the theatre.
"That, sir, is all my tale. The man is lost to me. He left
Venice yesterday in the Archdeacon's carriage, but in what
precise capacity--whether as valet, secretary, or courier--he
would not impart. He told me, however, that his salary was
sufficient, if not ample, and that he had undertaken as a
repentant sinner to make himself generally useful.
The Archdeacon, it appears, is collecting evidence in
particular of the horrors of a Continental Sabbath.
"Addio, sir! For me, I have now parted with the last of my
comrades, yet my resolution remains unshaken. On this sacred
soil, where so many before me have cultivated the Arts, I will
do more. I will make them pay. Meanwhile I beg you to accept
my sincere regards, and to believe me
"Your obliged, obedient servant,
"Phineas Fett."
William Priske has espoused Mrs. Nance, our good housekeeper; I
believe upon her own advice.
The Trappists (sixteen in number) yet dwell with us, and the left
wing of Constantine has been reserved for their use. They have
deserved our gratitude, though, out of respect for their rules, I
could never convey it to them in words. Indeed, it is but seldom
that I get speech even with Dom Basilio. Sometimes when his walk
leads him by the river-bank where I stand a-fishing he will seat
himself for a while and watch; and then I find a comfort in his
presence, as though we conversed together without help of speech.
Then also, though my reason disapprove of our guest's rigour, an
inward voice tells me that there is good in their religion, as
perchance there is good wherever men have found anchorage for their
souls.
I remember once listening in our summer-house, upon St. Swithun's
feast, while my dear brother-in-law disputed with Mr. Grylls upon
action and contemplation--which of them was the properer end of man.
I thought then that each of them, though they talked up and down and
at large, was in truth defending his own temperament: and, because I
loved them both, that neither needed defending. For my own part, the
small daily cares of Constantine have stolen away from me, not
altogether unhappily, the time of choosing, and I ask now but to
follow that counsel of the Apostle wherewith my master Walton closed
his book, and "Study to be Quiet."
G.A.
[1] Here--for it scarcely appears in the narrative--let me say that
my sister was an exemplary wife and, while fate spared her, a devoted
mother. I knew my brother-in-law for a great man, incapable of a
thought or action less than kingly, and I worshipped him (as Ben
Jonson would say) "on this side idolatry"; but if the Constantines
have a fault, it is that they demand too much of life, and exact it
somewhat too much as a matter of course. I have heard this fault
attributed to other great men.--G.A.
FINIS