THE DUEL IN THE PASS
Meanwhile Captain Weisspriess had not been idle. Standing at a blunt
angle of the ways converging upon Vittoria's presumed destination, he had
roused up the gendarmerie along the routes to Meran by Trent on one side,
and Bormio on the other; and he soon came to the conclusion that she had
rejected the valley of the Adige for the Valtelline, whence he supposed
that she would be tempted either to cross the Stelvio or one of the
passes into Southernmost Tyrol. He was led to think that she would
certainly bear upon Switzerland, by a course of reasoning connected with
Angelo Guidascarpi, who, fleeing under the cross of blood, might be
calculated on to push for the mountains of the Republic; and he might
judging by the hazards--conduct the lady thither, to enjoy the fruits of
crime and love in security. The captain, when he had discovered Angelo's
crest and name on the betraying handkerchief, had no doubts concerning
the nature of their intimacy, and he was spurred by a new and thrice
eager desire to capture the couple--the criminal for the purposes of
justice, and the other because he had pledged his notable reputation in
the chase of her. The conscience of this man's vanity was extremely
active. He had engaged to conquer the stubborn girl, and he thought it
possible that he might take a mistress from the patriot ranks, with a
loud ha! ha! at revolutionists, and some triumph over his comrades. And
besides, he was the favourite of Countess Anna of Lenkenstein, who yet
refused to bring her estates to him; she dared to trifle; she also was a
woman who required rude lessons. Weisspriess, a poor soldier bearing the
heritage of lusty appetites, had an eye on his fortune, and served
neither Mars alone nor Venus. Countess Anna was to be among that company
assembled at the Castle of Sonnenberg in Meran; and if, while introducing
Vittoria there with a discreet and exciting reserve, he at the same time
handed over the assassin of Count Paul, a fine harvest of praise and
various pleasant forms of female passion were to be looked for--a rich
vista of a month's intrigue; at the end of it possibly his wealthy lady,
thoroughly tamed, for a wife, and redoubled triumph over his comrades.
Without these successes, what availed the fame of the keenest swordsman
in the Austrian army?--The feast as well as the plumes of vanity offered
rewards for the able exercise of his wits.
He remained at the sub-Alpine inn until his servant Wilhelm (for whom he
had despatched the duchess's chasseur, then in attendance on Vittoria)
arrived from Milan, bringing his uniform. The chasseur was directed on
the Bormio line, with orders that he should cause the arrest of Vittoria
only in the case of her being on the extreme limit of the Swiss frontier.
Keeping his communications alert, Weisspriess bore that way to meet him.
Fortune smiled on his strategy. Jacob Baumwalder Feckelwitz--full of
wine, and discharging hurrahs along the road--met him on the bridge over
the roaring Oglio, just out of Edolo, and gave him news of the fugitives.
'Both of them were at the big hotel in Bormio,' said Jacob; 'and I set up
a report that the Stelvio was watched; and so it is.' He added that he
thought they were going to separate; he had heard something to that
effect; he believed that the young lady was bent upon crossing one of the
passes to Meran. Last night it had devolved on him to kiss away the
tears of the young lady's maid, a Valtelline peasant-girl, who deplored
the idea of an expedition over the mountains, and had, with the usual
cat-like tendencies of these Italian minxes, torn his cheek in return for
his assiduities. Jacob displayed the pretty scratch obtained in the Herr
Captain's service, and got his money for having sighted Vittoria and seen
double. Weisspriess decided in his mind that Angelo had now separated
from her (or rather, she from him) for safety. He thought it very
probable that she would likewise fly to Switzerland. Yet, knowing that
there was the attraction of many friends for her at Meran, he conceived
that he should act more prudently by throwing himself on that line, and
he sped Jacob Baumwalder along the Valtelline by Val Viola, up to Ponte
in the Engadine, with orders to seize her if he could see her, and have
her conveyed to Cles, in Tyrol. Vittoria being only by the gentlest
interpretation of her conduct not under interdict, an unscrupulous
Imperial officer might in those military times venture to employ the
gendarmerie for his own purposes, if he could but give a plausible colour
of devotion to the Imperial interests.
The chasseur sped lamentingly back, and Weisspriess, taking a guide from
the skirting hamlet above Edolo, quitted the Val Camonica, climbed the
Tonale, and reached Vermiglio in the branch valley of that name,
scientifically observing the features of the country as he went. At
Vermiglio he encountered a brother officer of one of his former
regiments, a fat major on a tour of inspection, who happened to be a week
behind news of the army, and detained him on the pretext of helping him
on his car--a mockery that drove Weisspriess to the perpetual reply, 'You
are my superior officer,' which reduced the major to ask him whether he
had been degraded a step. As usual, Weisspriess was pushed to assert his
haughtiness, backed by the shadow of his sword. 'I am a man with a
family,' said the major, modestly. 'Then I shall call you my superior
officer while they allow you to remain so,' returned Weisspriess, who
scorned a married soldier.
'I aspired to the Staff once myself,' said the major. 'Unfortunately, I
grew in girth--the wrong way for ambition. I digest, I assimilate with a
fatal ease. Stout men are doomed to the obscurer paths. You may quote
Napoleon as a contrary instance. I maintain positively that his day was
over, his sun was eclipsed, when his valet had to loosen the buckles of
his waistcoat and breech. Now, what do you say?'
'I say,' Weisspriess replied, 'that if there's a further depreciation of
the paper currency, we shall none of us have much chance of digesting or
assimilating either--if I know at all what those processes mean.'
'Our good Lombard cow is not half squeezed enough,' observed the major,
confidentially in tone. 'When she makes a noise--quick! the pail at her
udders and work away; that's my advice. What's the verse?--our
Zwitterwitz's, I mean; the Viennese poet:--
"Her milk is good-the Lombard cow;
Let her be noisy when she pleases
But if she kicks the pail, I vow,
We'll make her used to sharper squeezes:
We'll write her mighty deeds in CHEESES:
(That is, if she yields milk enow)."
'Capital! capital!' the major applauded his quotation, and went on to
speak of 'that Zwitterwitz' as having served in a border regiment, after
creating certain Court scandal, and of his carrying off a Wallach lady
from her lord and selling her to a Turk, and turning Turk himself and
keeping a harem. Five years later he reappeared in Vienna with a volume
of what he called 'Black Eagle Poems,' and regained possession of his
barony. 'So far, so good,' said the major; 'but when he applied for his
old commission in the army--that was rather too cool.'
Weisspriess muttered intelligibly, 'I've heard the remark, that you can't
listen to a man five minutes without getting something out of him.'
'I don't know; it may be,' said the major, imagining that Weisspriess
demanded some stronger flavours of gossip in his talk. 'There's no stir
in these valleys. They arrested, somewhere close on Trent yesterday
afternoon, a fellow calling himself Beppo, the servant of an Italian
woman--a dancer, I fancy. They're on the lookout for her too, I'm told;
though what sort of capers she can be cutting in Tyrol, I can't even
guess.'
The major's car was journeying leisurely toward Cles. 'Whip that brute!'
Weisspriess sang out to the driver, and begging the major's pardon,
requested to know whither he was bound. The major informed him that he
hoped to sup in Trent. 'Good heaven! not at this pace,' Weisspriess
shouted. But the pace was barely accelerated, and he concealed his
reasons for invoking speed. They were late in arriving at Trent, where
Weisspriess cast eye on the imprisoned wretch, who declared piteously
that he was the trusted and innocent servant of the Signorina Vittoria,
and had been visiting all the castles of Meran in search of her. The
captain's man Wilhelm had been the one to pounce on poor Beppo while the
latter was wandering disconsolately. Leaving him to howl, Weisspriess
procured the loan of a horse from a colonel of cavalry at the Buon
Consiglio barracks, and mounted an hour before dawn, followed by Wilhelm.
He reached Cles in time to learn that Vittoria and her party had passed
through it a little in advance of him. Breakfasting there, he enjoyed
the first truly calm cigar of many days. Gendarmes whom he had met near
the place came in at his heels. They said that the party would
positively be arrested, or not allowed to cross the Monte Pallade. The
passes to Meran and Botzen, and the road to Trent, were strictly guarded.
Weisspriess hurried them forward with particular orders that they should
take into custody the whole of the party, excepting the lady; her, if
arrested with the others, they were to release: her maid and the three
men were to be marched back to Cles, and there kept fast.
The game was now his own: he surveyed its pretty intricate moves as on a
map. The character of Herr Johannes he entirely discarded: an Imperial
officer in his uniform, sword in belt, could scarcely continue that meek
performance. 'But I may admire music, and entreat her to give me a
particular note, if she has it,' said the captain, hanging in
contemplation over a coming scene, like a quivering hawk about to close
its wings. His heart beat thick; which astonished him: hitherto it had
never made that sort of movement.
From Cles he despatched a letter to the fair chatelaine at Meran, telling
her that by dainty and skilful management of the paces, he was bringing
on the intractable heroine of the Fifteenth, and was to be expected in
about two or three days. The letter was entrusted to Wilhelm, who took
the borrowed horse back to Trent.
Weisspriess was on the mule-track a mile above the last village ascending
to the pass, when he observed the party of prisoners, and climbed up into
covert. As they went by he discerned but one person in female garments;
the necessity to crouch for obscurity prevented him from examining them
separately. He counted three men and beheld one of them between
gendarmes. 'That must be my villain,' he said.
It was clear that Vittoria had chosen to go forward alone. The captain
praised her spirit, and now pushed ahead with hunter's strides. He
passed an inn, closed and tenantless: behind him lay the Val di Non; in
front the darker valley of the Adige: where was the prey? A storm of
rage set in upon him with the fear that he had been befooled. He lit a
cigar, to assume ease of aspect, whatever the circumstances might be, and
gain some inward serenity by the outer reflection of it--not altogether
without success. 'My lady must be a doughty walker,' he thought; 'at
this rate she will be in the Ultenthal before sunset.' A wooded height
ranged on his left as he descended rapidly. Coming to a roll of grass
dotted with grey rock, he climbed it, and mounting one of the boulders,
beheld at a distance of half-a-dozen stone-throws downward, the figure of
a woman holding her hand cup-shape to a wayside fall of water. The path
by which she was going rounded the height he stood on. He sprang over
the rocks, catching up his clattering steel scabbard; and plunging
through tinted leafage and green underwood, steadied his heels on a
sloping bank, and came down on the path with stones and earth and
brambles, in time to appear as a seated pedestrian when Vittoria turned
the bend of the mountain way.
Gracefully withdrawing the cigar from his mouth, and touching his breast
with turned-in fingers, he accosted her with a comical operatic effort at
her high notes
'Italia!'
She gathered her arms on her bosom and looked swiftly round: then at the
apparition of her enemy.
It is but an ironical form of respect that you offer to the prey you have
been hotly chasing and have caught. Weisspriess conceived that he had
good reasons for addressing her in the tone best suited to his character:
he spoke with a ridiculous mincing suavity:
'My pretty sweet! are you not tired? We have not seen one another for
days! Can you have forgotten the enthusiastic Herr Johannes? You have
been in pleasant company, no doubt; but I have been all--all alone.
Think of that! What an exceedingly fortunate chance this is! I was
smoking dolefully, and imagining anything but such a rapture.--No, no,
mademoiselle, be mannerly.' The captain blocked her passage. 'You must
not leave me while I am speaking. A good governess would have taught you
that in the nursery. I am afraid you had an inattentive governess, who
did not impress upon you the duty of recognizing friends when you meet
them! Ha! you were educated in England, I have heard. Shake hands.
It is our custom--I think a better one--to kiss on the right cheek and
the left, but we will shake hands.'
'In God's name, sir, let me go on,' Vittoria could just gather voice to
utter.
'But,' cried the delighted captain, 'you address me in the tones of a
basso profundo! It is absurd. Do you suppose that I am to be deceived
by your artifice?--rogue that you are! Don't I know you are a woman?
a sweet, an ecstatic, a darling little woman!'
He laughed. She shivered to hear the solitary echoes. There was
sunlight on the farthest Adige walls, but damp shade already filled the
East-facing hollows.
'I beg you very earnestly, to let me go on,' said Vittoria.
'With equal earnestness, I beg you to let me accompany you,' he replied.
'I mean no offence, mademoiselle; but I have sworn that I and no one but
I shall conduct you to the Castle of Sonnenberg, where you will meet the
Lenkenstein ladies, with whom I have the honour to be acquainted. You
see, you have nothing to fear if you play no foolish pranks, like a
kicking filly in the pasture.'
'If it is your pleasure,' she said gravely; but he obtruded the bow of an
arm. She drew back. Her first blank despair at sight of the trap she
had fallen into, was clearing before her natural high courage.
'My little lady! my precious prima donna! do you refuse the most trifling
aid from me? It's because I'm a German.'
'There are many noble gentlemen who are Germans,' said Vittoria.
'It 's because I'm a German; I know it is. But, don't you see, Germany
invades Italy, and keeps hold of her? Providence decrees it so--ask the
priests! You are a delicious Italian damsel, and you will take the arm
of a German.'
Vittoria raised her face. 'Do you mean that I am your prisoner?'
'You did not look braver at La Scala'; the captain bowed to her.
'Ah, I forgot,' said she; 'you saw me there. If, signore, you will do me
the favour to conduct me to the nearest inn, I will sing to you.'
'It is precisely my desire, signorina.
You are not married to that man Guidascarpi, I presume? No, no: you are
merely his . . . friend. May I have the felicity of hearing you call
me your friend? Why, you tremble! are you afraid of me?'
'To tell the truth, you talk too much to please me,' said Vittoria.
The captain praised her frankness, and he liked it. The trembling of her
frame still fascinated his eyes, but her courage and the absence of all
womanly play and cowering about her manner impressed him seriously. He
stood looking at her, biting his moustache, and trying to provoke her to
smile.
'Conduct you to the nearest inn; yes,' he said, as if musing. 'To the
nearest inn, where you will sing to me; sing to me. It is not an
objectionable scheme. The inns will not be choice: but the society will
be exquisite. Say first, I am your sworn cavalier?'
'It does not become me to say that,' she replied, feigning a demure
sincerity, on the verge of her patience.
'You allow me to say it?'
She gave him a look of fire and passed him; whereat, following her, he
clapped hands, and affected to regard the movement as part of an operatic
scena. 'It is now time to draw your dagger,' he said. 'You have one,
I'm certain.'
'Anything but touch me!' cried Vittoria, turning on him. 'I know that I
am safe. You shall teaze me, if it amuses you.'
'Am I not, now, the object of your detestation?'
'You are near being so.'
'You see! You put on no disguise; why should I?'
This remark struck her with force.
'My temper is foolish,' she said softly. 'I have always been used to
kindness.'
He vowed that she had no comprehension of kindness; otherwise would she
continue defiant of him? She denied that she was defiant: upon which he
accused the hand in her bosom of clutching a dagger. She cast the dagger
at his feet. It was nobly done, and he was not insensible to the courage
and inspiration of the act; for it checked a little example of a trial of
strength that he had thought of exhibiting to an armed damsel.
'Shall I pick it up for you?' he said.
'You will oblige me,' was her answer; but she could not control a
convulsion of her underlip that her defensive instinct told her was best
hidden.
'Of course, you know you are safe,' he repeated her previous words, while
examining the silver handle of the dagger. 'Safe? certainly! Here is
C. A. to V. . . . A. neatly engraved: a gift; so that the young
gentleman may be sure the young lady will defend herself from lions and
tigers and wild boars, if ever she goes through forests and over mountain
passes. I will not obtrude my curiosity, but who is V . . . . A. ?'
The dagger was Carlo's gift to her; the engraver, by singular
misadventure, had put a capital letter for the concluding letter of her
name instead of little a; she remembered the blush on Carlo's face when
she had drawn his attention to the error, and her own blush when she had
guessed its meaning.
'It spells my name,' she said.
'Your assumed name of Vittoria. And who is C. A.?'
'Those are the initials of Count Carlo Ammiani.'
'Another lover?'
'He is my sole lover. He is my betrothed. Oh, good God!' she threw her
eyes up to heaven; 'how long am I to endure the torture of this man in my
pathway? Go, sir, or let me go on. You are intolerable. It 's the
spirit of a tiger. I have no fear of you.'
'Nay, nay,' said Weisspriess, 'I asked the question because I am under an
obligation to run Count Carlo Ammiani through the body, and felt at once
that I should regret the necessity. As to your not fearing me, really,
far from wishing to hurt you--'
Vittoria had caught sight of a white face framed in the autumnal forest
above her head. So keen was the glad expression of her face, that
Weisspriess looked up.
'Come, Angelo, come to me;' she said confidently.
Weisspriess plucked his sword out, and called to him imperiously to
descend.
Beckoned downward by white hand and flashing blade, Angelo steadied his
feet and hands among drooping chestnut boughs, and bounded to Vittoria's
side.
'Now march on,' Weisspriess waved his sword; 'you are my prisoners.'
'You,' retorted Angelo; 'I know you; you are a man marked out for one of
us. I bid you turn back, if you care for your body's safety.'
'Angelo Guidascarpi, I also know you. Assassin! you double murderer!
Defy me, and I slay you in the sight of your paramour.'
'Captain Weisspriess, what you have spoken merits death. I implore of my
Maker that I may not have to kill you.'
'Fool! you are unarmed.'
Angelo took his stilet in his fist.
'I have warned you, Captain Weisspriess. Here I stand. I dare you to
advance.'
'You pronounce my name abominably,' said the captain, dropping his
sword's point. 'If you think of resisting me, let us have no women
looking on.' He waved his left hand at Vittoria.
Angelo urged her to go. 'Step on for our Carlo's sake.' But it was
asking too much of her.
'Can you fight this man?' she asked.
'I can fight him and kill him.'
'I will not step on,' she said. 'Must you fight him?'
'There is no choice.' Vittoria walked to a distance at once.
Angelo directed the captain's eyes to where, lower in the pass, there was
a level plot of meadow.
Weisspriess nodded. 'The odds are in my favour, so you shall choose the
ground.'
All three went silently to the meadow.
It was a circle of green on a projecting shoulder of the mountain,
bounded by woods that sank toward the now shadowy South-flowing Adige
vale, whose Western heights were gathering red colour above a strongly-
marked brown line. Vittoria stood at the border of the wood, leaving the
two men to their work. She knew when speech was useless.
Captain Weisspriess paced behind Angelo until the latter stopped short,
saying, 'Here!'
'Wherever you please,' Weisspriess responded. 'The ground is of more
importance to you than to me.'
They faced mutually; one felt the point of his stilet, the other the
temper of his sword.
'Killing you, Angelo Guidascarpi, is the killing of a dog. But there
are such things as mad dogs. This is not a duel. It is a righteous
execution, since you force me to it: I shall deserve your thanks for
saving you from the hangman. I think you have heard that I can use my
weapon. There's death on this point for you. Make your peace with your
Maker.'
Weisspriess spoke sternly. He delayed the lifting of his sword that the
bloody soul might pray.
Angelo said, 'You are a good soldier: you are a bad priest. Come on.'
A nod of magnanimous resignation to the duties of his office was the
captain's signal of readiness. He knew exactly the method of fighting
which Angelo must adopt, and he saw that his adversary was supple, and
sinewy, and very keen of eye. But, what can well compensate for even one
additional inch of steel? A superior weapon wielded by a trained wrist
in perfect coolness means victory, by every reasonable reckoning. In the
present instance, it meant nothing other than an execution, as he had
said. His contemplation of his own actual share in the performance was
nevertheless unpleasant; and it was but half willingly that he
straightened out his sword and then doubled his arm. He lessened the
odds in his favour considerably by his too accurate estimation of them.
He was also a little unmanned by the thought that a woman was to see him
using his advantage; but she stood firm in her distant corner, refusing
to be waved out of sight. Weisspriess had again to assure himself that
it was not a duel, but the enforced execution of a criminal who would not
surrender, and who was in his way. Fronting a creature that would vainly
assail him, and temporarily escape impalement by bounding and springing,
dodging and backing, now here now there, like a dangling bob-cherry, his
military gorge rose with a sickness of disgust. He had to remember as
vividly as he could realize it, that this man's life was forfeited, and
that the slaughter of him was a worthy service to Countess Anna; also,
that there were present reasons for desiring to be quit of him. He gave
Angelo two thrusts, and bled him. The skill which warded off the more
vicious one aroused his admiration.
'Pardon my blundering,' he said; 'I have never engaged a saltimbanque
before.'
They recommenced. Weisspriess began to weigh the sagacity of his
opponent's choice of open ground, where he could lengthen the discourse
of steel by retreating and retreating, and swinging easily to right or to
left. In the narrow track the sword would have transfixed him after a
single feint. He was amused. Much of the cat was in his combative
nature. An idea of disabling or dismembering Angelo, and forwarding him
to Meran, caused him to trifle further with the edge of the blade.
Angelo took a cut, and turned it on his arm; free of the deadly point, he
rushed in and delivered a stab; but Weisspriess saved his breast. Quick,
they resumed their former positions.
'I am really so unused to this game!' said Weisspriess, apologetically.
He was pale: his unsteady breathing, and a deflection of his dripping
sword-wrist, belied his coolness. Angelo plunged full on him, dropped,
and again reached his right arm; they hung, getting blood for blood, with
blazing interpenetrating eyes; a ghastly work of dark hands at half lock
thrusting, and savage eyes reading the fiery pages of the book of hell.
At last the Austrian got loose from the lock and hurled him off.
'That bout was hotter,' he remarked; and kept his sword-point out on the
whole length of the arm: he would have scorned another for so miserable a
form either of attack or defence.
Vittoria beheld Angelo circling round the point, which met him
everywhere; like the minute hand of a clock about to sound his hour, she
thought.
He let fall both his arms, as if beaten, which brought on the attack: by
sheer evasion he got away from the sword's lunge, and essayed a second
trial of the bite of steel at close quarters; but the Austrian backed and
kept him to the point, darting short alluring thrusts, thinking to tempt
him on, or to wind him, and then to have him. Weisspriess was chilled by
a more curious revulsion from this sort of engagement than he at first
experienced. He had become nervously incapable of those proper niceties
of sword-play which, without any indecent hacking or maiming, should have
stretched Angelo, neatly slain, on the mat of green, before he had a
chance. Even now the sight of the man was distressing to an honourable
duellist. Angelo was scored with blood-marks. Feeling that he dared not
offer another chance to a fellow so desperately close-dealing,
Weisspriess thrust fiercely, but delayed his fatal stroke. Angelo
stooped and pulled up a handful of grass and soft earth in his left hand.
'We have been longer about it than I expected,' said Weisspriess.
Angelo tightened his fingers about the stringy grasstuft; he stood like a
dreamer, leaning over to the sword; suddenly he sprang on it, received
the point right in his side, sprang on it again, and seized it in his
hand, and tossed it up, and threw it square out in time to burst within
guard and strike his stilet below the Austrian's collar-bone. The blade
took a glut of blood, as when the wolf tears quick at dripping flesh. It
was at a moment when Weisspriess was courteously bantering him with the
question whether he was ready, meaning that the affirmative should open
the gates of death to him.
The stilet struck thrice. Weisspriess tottered, and hung his jaw like a
man at a spectre: amazement was on his features.
'Remember Broncini and young Branciani!'
Angelo spoke no other words throughout the combat.
Weisspriess threw himself forward on a feeble lunge of his sword, and let
the point sink in the ground, as a palsied cripple supports his frame,
swayed, and called to Angelo to come on, and try another stroke, another
--one more! He fell in a lump: his look of amazement was surmounted by a
strong frown.
His enemy was hanging above him panting out of wide nostrils, like a
hunter's horse above the long-tongued quarry, when Vittoria came to them.
She reached her strength to the wounded man to turn his face to heaven.
He moaned, 'Finish me'; and, as he lay with his back to earth, 'Good-
evening to the old army!'
A vision of leaping tumbrils, and long marching columns about to deploy,
passed before his eyelids: he thought he had fallen on the battle-field,
and heard a drum beat furiously in the back of his head; and on streamed
the cavalry, wonderfully caught away to such a distance that the figures
were all diminutive, and the regimental colours swam in smoke, and the
enemy danced a plume here and there out of the sea, while his mother and
a forgotten Viennese girl gazed at him with exactly the same unfamiliar
countenance, and refused to hear that they were unintelligible in the
roaring of guns and floods and hurrahs, and the thumping of the
tremendous big drum behind his head--'somewhere in the middle of the
earth': he tried to explain the locality of that terrible drumming noise
to them, and Vittoria conceived him to be delirious; but he knew that he
was sensible; he knew her and Angelo and the mountain-pass, and that he
had a cigar-case in his pocket worked in embroidery of crimson, blue, and
gold, by the hands of Countess Anna. He said distinctly that he desired
the cigar-case to be delivered to Countess Anna at the Castle of
Sonnenberg, and rejoiced on being assured that his wish was comprehended
and should be fulfilled; but the marvel was, that his mother should still
refuse to give him wine, and suppose him to be a boy: and when he was so
thirsty and dry-lipped that though Mina was bending over him, just fresh
from Mariazell, he had not the heart to kiss her or lift an arm to her!--
His horse was off with him-whither?--He was going down with a company of
infantry in the Gulf of Venice: cards were in his hands, visible, though
he could not feel them, and as the vessel settled for the black plunge,
the cards flushed all honours, and his mother shook her head at him: he
sank, and heard Mina sighing all the length of the water to the bottom,
which grated and gave him two horrid shocks of pain: and he cried for a
doctor, and admitted that his horse had managed to throw him; but wine
was the cure, brandy was the cure, or water, water! Water was sprinkled
on his forehead and put to his lips.
He thanked Vittoria by name, and imagined himself that General, serving
under old Wurmser, of whom the tale is told that being shot and lying
grievously wounded on the harsh Rivoli ground, he obtained the help of a
French officer in as bad case as himself, to moisten his black tongue and
write a short testamentary document with his blood, and for a way of
returning thanks to the Frenchman, he put down among others, the name of
his friendly enemy's widow; whereupon both resigned their hearts to
death; but the Austrian survived to find the sad widow and espouse her.
His mutterings were full of gratitude, showing a vividly transient
impression to what was about him, that vanished in a narrow-headed flight
through clouds into lands of memory. It pained him, he said, that he
could not offer her marriage; but he requested that when his chin was
shaved his moustache should be brushed up out of the way of the clippers,
for he and all his family were conspicuous for the immense amount of life
which they had in them, and his father had lain six-and-thirty hours
bleeding on the field of Wagram, and had yet survived to beget a race as
hearty as himself:--'Old Austria! thou grand old Austria!'
The smile was proud, though faint, which accompanied the apostrophe,
addressed either to his country or to his father's personification of it;
it was inexpressibly pathetic to Vittoria, who understood his
'Oesterreich,' and saw the weak and helpless bleeding man, with his
eyeballs working under the lids, and the palms of his hands stretched out
open-weak as a corpse, but conquering death.
The arrival of Jacopo and Johann furnished help to carry him onward to
the nearest place of shelter. Angelo would not quit her side until he
had given money and directions to both the trembling fellows, together
with his name, that they might declare the author of the deed at once if
questioned. He then bowed to Vittoria slightly and fled. They did not
speak.
The last sunbeams burned full crimson on the heights of the Adige
mountains as Vittoria followed the two pale men who bore the wounded
officer between them at a slow pace for the nearest village in the
descent of the pass.
Angelo watched them out of sight. The far-off red rocks spun round his
eyeballs; the meadow was a whirling thread of green; the brown earth
heaved up to him. He felt that he was diving, and had the thought that
there was but water enough to moisten his red hands when his senses left
him.